REVIEW
Well, I believe today we will be concluding our series entitled “Imitators of Love” where we have learned more about Love Himself. We started off talking about how the high call of every believer in a nutshell is to imitate our Heavenly Father as His dear children. This is what the Bible calls “godliness.” So, in order to be godly by imitating God in our everyday life, we first have to know who and what we are imitating. So it is imperative that if you and I are going to replicate the Lord’s nature in our lives, then we need to learn what His nature is. And I can assure you, church, He is love. So everything we learn about love in the Bible is what we are learning about the Lord. The Lord is love! And there is a lot to learn about love, amen? In fact, this is part 15 of this series, which I know is a lot, but it’s important that we build this new image of God’s nature not just in our heads but in our hearts. So what we are doing is taking these “legos of love” and building something amazing! We’ve specifically been using the pieces found in First Corinthians 13:4-8, which gives us one of the most concise descriptions of love and, therefore, since God is love, it can be read like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we have looked at verse 7, with what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We learned that love “bearing” all things literally describes love as covering, concealing, or hiding something—thus protecting them. In fact, we learned how the root word for this that Paul used here in First Corinthians 13:7, was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, love covers all! We then looked at what Paul says at the end of verse 7 of how love “endures all things” which describes how love has staying under power – meaning love will put up with and tolerate a lot more in others than our flesh would like to. So love endures all! Last week, we looked at the other two characteristics of love in this verse that says, “love believes all things, hopes all things.” The phrase “love believes all things” describes believing the best in everyone. In other words, love is not cynical by nature. No, it’s not pessimistic, but it trusts by default. Therefore, love tends towards giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, this does not mean that love is gullible and will accept just anything as the truth. What it does mean, however, is that while love might certainly be aware of the truth, it chooses to magnify something else instead. In other words, while love is not blind (contrary to what the world likes to say), it does focus on the positives in the other person more than their negatives. But I like the Living Bible’s translation because it says that love “will always believe in him (the person they are loving).” The New Living Translation puts it this way – Love “never loses faith (in others)” This obviously describes how love will believe in people, and never quit on them. To me, this is more of the idea that is being expressed here – believing in another person, not simply believing everything they tell you. Then we looked at what it means that love “hopes all things” and found that the New Testament term hope describes a confident expectation of something good in the future. So when it comes to this description of love, we can see that love has more of an expectation of something good tied to it. Therefore, if I am loving someone else, then I will have a similar hope for them – that is, I will hope, wish, desire, and expect blessings to befall them. I will hope these good things will happen to them like I would that they happen to me. Yes, if I love someone, I will desire that they are blessed, I’ll wish God’s best for them, and I’ll be optimistic that they will receive what He wants for them. But if I “hope all” for them, then that means that I will have a confident expectation of those good things happening in their life. And we learned that God certainly does believe in us and hope for us! You see, sometimes we think God is done with us because of the mistakes that we’ve made. We think we’ve nullified His plan for our lives because we’ve turned from His plan too many times. But when we consider Israel, we must conclude that God will never quit on us—especially when our covenant is written not in the blood of bulls and goats, but in the precious blood of Jesus Christ! Amen! Praise God, church, God will never, ever, quit on us! If He began a good work, He will see it through! He is faithful even when we are faithless, and He was, is, and evermore shall be the God of hope! Amen! LOVE NEVER DIES But like I said, I believe we are rounding up our look at God’s amazing love this week. And we are doing this by looking at the last characteristic of love given to us in First Corinthians chapter 13 when the apostle Paul begins verse 8 by saying, “love never fails.” Now this is yet another time when understanding the original language and looking at other translations becomes important. The reason is because when see the word “fails” here, our mind might go towards “failing” in the sense of failing to succeed at something like we fail a test. But that could lead one to believe that Paul was saying that “love never loses” or “love always succeeds.” And while it is certainly true that love is the way to victory and is how to be successful in this life and in the kingdom of God, that’s not exactly what “fails” means here. When we study this word “fails,” we can clearly see how it more describes something ending, ceasing, dying, etc.—kind of like when the Bible refers to a flower failing. Therefore, when we are told here that love never fails, the idea is more of love never dying or love never ending. And you don’t even need to know how to look up words to understand this because his point is even more clear as you go on to read what Paul said in the rest of this verse, where he says, “But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.” So it’s like the translators wanted to use various synonyms for “fail” by saying that these other things like prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will “cease” and “vanish away.” So we can conclude that love will NEVER fail, cease, or vanish away. In other words, it will never end. It’s for this reason that I like the following translations: The New Living Translation says, “But love will last forever” and the Message Bible says, “Love never dies.” So this description of love never ending shows us some important things about how love works in our lives – some of which are contrary to the way folks refer to love. In fact, the Greek word that is used to define “fails” literally means to “fall out”—which is interesting because what is something that the world likes to say about love? It likes to describe one “falling in” and “falling out” of love. But what did we just learn? It’s that the literal translation of this phrase is that “love never falls out.” Therefore, according to the Scriptures, love is never something that we fall in & out of. This is important to understand because how many times have we heard of someone who started off falling head over heels in love with someone and then, after some time, they say those “feelings” that they had for them have changed and that they have “fallen out” of love with them. This is not the love of God, church. No, if we are being honest, what is happening is that person who says this, is falling in and out of “feelings.” But the truth is love is not a feeling. For example, what do people like to say when they “fall out of love?” They say, “I just don’t feel for you the same way I used to feel about you.” This, again, indicates that to them, love is a feeling or an emotion. No! The truth is that when someone says they have fallen out of love with someone, really what they are saying is that they have “fallen out of feelings.” It is actually impossible to “fall out of” the true love of God. Why? Because love is an act of your will and is not an emotion or a feeling! No, real love never ENDS because it’s a spiritual virtue and while the way we feel can certainly change, spiritual realities never change! Therefore, because God never changes, His love is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore! GOD’S LOVE NEVER FAILS Now as we’ve been doing throughout this series, let’s delve into His love as we round up our study. So if love never fails, then that means God never fails – which teaches us that God never ends and, therefore, His love never ends. In fact, this is what that very popular “praise phrase” that we see throughout the Old Testament is saying – You know, the one that says, “For the Lord is good and His mercy endures forever.” You see, the phrase “His mercy endures forever” describes that hesed kind of covenant love (which we will get into here in a moment). But the word “endures” was added by the translators. Therefore, this phrase literally reads as so – His steadfast, covenant love is forever – which is essentially saying the same thing as First Corinthians 13:8 – that His love never ends. So what does this mean that God’s love never ends, ceases, or dies? It simply means that we can never see the end of His love. He doesn’t quit on His people. He keeps on loving us no matter how far out there we get or how long we are out there. His love is forever, and it knows no end. Church, this is evidently an important truth for us to understand about God’s love because of how much we see it highlighted throughout the Scriptures. Let me give you a couple more places where we see it mentioned in different ways … One is found in Jeremiah 31:3, where the Lord said to His people through the Prophet Jeremiah –“The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore, with lovingkindness I have drawn you.’” This was again another time where God’s people had been disciplined for forsaking God’s living waters. Yet, even in their failure, the Lord said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” And everlasting love sounds to me like a love that never fails, amen? Can you hear it today? Can you hear the Lord saying to you this same thing, church? “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” This is what the Spirit is saying to His church right now! In another example from the ministry of Jeremiah, we’ve seen what the Lord told His people in Lamentations 3:22. This was a verse we looked at last week, but I want you to notice something about this passage of Scripture: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.” Now the Lord’s “mercies” is describing that covenant, faithful love of God. So it is through that love that God’s people are not consumed – meaning that it was because of God’s unending love that they had not been totally destroyed. In other words, even though they had messed up and gotten themselves into this situation, through the Lord’s faithful love, He had not let them be utterly destroyed. And why was that? Well, he went on to say exactly why – “because His compassions fail not.” Now compassion is certainly a fruit of love and here we see how this love of God “fails not”—meaning, it never ends like First Corinthians 13:8 declares. So through the countless times that we see His steadfast love & mercy being described as being forever, it is crystal clear that God’s amazing love never fails. COVENANT LOVE But as promised, I want us now to look at this Old Testament word that was used to describe God’s love in many of these verses, because I believe it will teach us a lot about this aspect of love never dying. The Hebrew word that is used in these verses to describe God’s lovingkindness, mercy, & faithfulness is the word hesed. In Exodus 34:6-7, this is how God revealed Himself to Moses when He gave him the Ten Commandments on the two tablets of stone. In this story, we are told – “Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” Now when it says in verse 5 that he proclaimed to Moses the name of the Lord, it is important to understand that he was not just declaring a term or title. To us, proclaiming a name might mean simply saying, “Bill, Joe, or Mary,” but in their day, the name of a person was their character, nature, and personality. So what God was proclaiming here was who He was. That’s important when considering what He said next as He passed before Moses … In verse 6, the Lord said concerning Himself – “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth …” So this is who God chose to reveal Himself as to His servant, Moses – As merciful, gracious, longsuffering, and then notice this … as “abounding in goodness and truth.” The word that is used for “goodness” here is the word hesed. So God described Himself as being filled with and overflowing in this virtue. So let’s look at what hesed is … This word is oftentimes translated as “lovingkindness and mercy” and it describes “unfailing, faithful, and steadfast love.” One translation calls it “loyal love” because the core idea of this term communicates loyalty & faithfulness within a relationship. It is for this reason that hesed is closely related to God’s covenant with His people, Israel. Therefore, as it relates to the concept of love, hesed expresses God’s faithfulness to His people. Now while we are not as in tune with the concept of covenant in our society today, I believe that something that we are certainly familiar with can help us understand this concept of hesed – the marriage covenant. You see, while marriages do not mean nearly as much to our modern-day society as they used to, the Scriptures teach us that a marriage is a covenant, not simply a contract. In other words, a marriage means much more to the Lord than it does to most people. Contracts can have a time limit on them, but marriages are meant to be permanent. Therefore, the concepts of loyalty, commitment, and faithfulness are, in the eyes of the Lord, a big part of a marriage. Now this is oh so important when it comes to this part of God’s nature – hesed. You see, I see hesed being perfectly illustrated by a marriage where both partners see their union as a covenant, and because of this, they place a premium on being faithful & loyal towards each other while also being steadfast in their love for one another. And this is certainly consistent with what we see in the Scriptures, because how many times do we see our relationship with the Lord being compared to a marriage? In the Old Testament, we see how God saw Himself as Israel’s husband. Let me show you a couple of examples of this: Isaiah 54:5 says, “For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is His name;” Jeremiah 31:31-32 also says, "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.” And while we have these verses that clearly say God was Israel’s husband, there are a ton of verses that come from that same perspective. However, they emphasize more of Israel’s failure to be a good wife to Him. Yes, there are countless verses throughout the Prophets in particular, that describe the “harlotry” of Israel even though they were married to the Lord. In other words, these verses describe how they were unfaithful to Him by turning to other gods and simply not loving Him with all their hearts. He often called this “playing the harlot.” HOSEA & GOMER One of our greatest examples of this is found in the Book of Hosea where the Lord sought to illustrate to His chosen people both their unfaithfulness and His heart to pursue them through His hesed. Now the story of Hosea is a unique one, but one with profound truths about God’s faithfulness. In short, the nation of Israel was in the middle of one of those times where their unfaithfulness to God was on full display. Yes, they were turning to other natural means of defending themselves which included other nations & their gods. To the Lord, this was the same as adultery. So what the Lord told His prophet to do was to go take for himself a prostitute named Gomer to be his wife – for (as Hosea 1:2 says) “the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.” So this marriage to the harlot was meant to illustrate to God’s people how they were like the harlot in His covenant with them. Like we’ve seen, God’s covenant with His people on Sinai was like a marriage covenant. The Lord wanted His people’s heart – for them to love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to certainly remain faithful to Him and Him alone. So whenever His people would turn to other gods, He saw it as them committing spiritual adultery against Him. So during this marriage with Gomer, she and Hosea had three children – all of which were meant to illustrate the fruit of His bride’s unfaithfulness. Yet after even this, Gomer left Hosea to be with another man. However, the Lord told Hosea to take back Gomer who, by the laws of the times, should have been stoned to death. And not only was he to take her back, but he was also to buy her back – showing us the power of redemption. You see, the man whom she ran to, as she embraced her adultery whole heartedly, required payment to release her back to her husband. The law allowed for Hosea to punish Gomer harshly, but instead, he received her back into his home and paid the man she went with to “redeem” her (See Hosea 3:2). Hosea 2:19-20 puts it beautifully: In it, the Lord says, “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” This pursuit of Israel by the Lord amidst her unfaithfulness is such a beautiful picture of the Lord’s faithfulness to His church today. It is so easy to see how the Lord might be quick to judge us or terminate our relationship with Him because of how far we can fall from His glory, but the lesson of God’s undying love for us is what is on full display in the Book of Hosea. THE SUBJECT OF MARRIAGE & DIVORCE Have you ever wondered why the Lord dealt so strongly with the subject of marriage and divorce? Why does He put such an importance on the sanctity of marriage? I believe it is for the same reason as we are looking at today – that in the Lord’s love for us, He will never divorce us! This is His attitude towards His covenant with us! Now in describing this, let me say this lest anyone receives any condemnation that is not intended: I (and the Lord) understand that a lot of us have had some difficult prior marriages. In some of these, we had abusive spouses. In others, we had unfaithful spouses. In even others, we ourselves were not walking with the Lord the way we might be today and simply didn’t know what we know now. No matter the situation, DO NOT let the enemy or your own heart condemn you over the past. Just allow the revelation of God’s love to impact your heart and see how this relates to your covenant with Him. We see Scripture after Scripture declaring how great is the faithfulness of our God, how He will never leave us nor forsake us, how He is the friend that sticks closer than a brother, and how even when our mother and father forsake us, He will stand by us. Time and time again, the Scriptures reinforce how the Lord is faithful, even when we are faithless. And faithfulness is best illustrated in the marriage covenant. If a husband is faithful, then that means that He will never leave His bride’s side for another. If he is faithful, then he will never lie to her. If he is faithful, he will never violate her trust by being joined to another. And this is the core reason why God is opposed to divorce. It is because it is completely opposite to how He treats us. He never stops loving us! He will never put us away! Nothing can pluck us out of His hand, and nothing can separate us from His love! Nothing! Just like the song we love to sing… Great is His faithfulness! This declaration was made in the Book of Lamentations where the nation of Israel was in a bad place, having forsaken their Lord and His ways. But, again, He is faithful even when we are faithless. So when it comes to the covenant relationship between Hosea & Gomer, their marriage is a love story, but not the fairy tale kind. Love will always end with “a happily ever after” because it never ends. Amen!
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REVIEW
Well, we are on the home stretch of our series entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are endeavoring to learn more about our loving God. You see, we’ve learned that the high calling of every Christian is to imitate God as His dear children (See Ephesians 5:1). And since God is love (First John 4:8), we are essentially called to imitate love itself. So what we’ve been doing is looking at verses where we are taught about the characteristics of love with the understanding that these must be the characteristics of God that we are called to imitate. Therefore, we have been coming to know Him more through looking at these verses that teach us how to love one another. We’ve specifically been looking at First Corinthians 13:4-8, which gives us one of the most concise descriptions of love and, therefore, since God is love, it can be read like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we started looking at verse 7, with what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Last week, we looked at the phrases that say how love “bears all things” & “endures all things.” We learned that love “bearing” all things literally describes love as covering, concealing, or hiding something—thus protecting them. In fact, we learned how the root word for this, that Paul used here in First Corinthians 13:7, was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, the idea of both covering & protecting is what is being indicated. Now this requires some explanation because in some ways, hiding or covering something might not be love at all. For example, if I am concealing truth in certain situations, I might be doing the exact opposite of what love demands because truth is not to be hidden. So I have to determine whether love would dictate whether or not speaking the truth in a situation is appropriate. Now I know there is a large contingent of people who believe that speaking the truth is always appropriate, but that’s not necessarily true either. There are times where love will zip its lips, be slow to speak, etc., and not broadcast something even though it is 100% sure that it’s true. We learned that the way the way we know when it is appropriate to speak the truth is found in Ephesians 4:15 when Paul taught us how we are to speak the truth in love. So how does this show us when we are to speak the truth? It’s when it can be done in love. In other words, ask yourself the question when you have the thought to speak something you know is true – Who am I loving by saying this, and how am I loving them? Asking this question can keep us from sharing things that aren’t what wisdom would have us share at the moment. We also learned that one characteristic of love is that it will cover sin. In quoting from the Book of Proverbs, First Peter 4:8 says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” So true, fervent love for one another is not going to expose sin; it’s going to cover it. And what are those things? The apostle Peter says, “a multitude of sins.” No, not just some sin, but a “multitude” of them. That means that it doesn’t matter how many times they have committed the same sin or how many times they have even sinned against us, love will cover their multitude of sins. We looked at one of the greatest Biblical examples that illustrates this, which is found in Genesis 9:20-27—the story of Noah being uncovered in His tent and how Ham was a “ham” by exposing his nakedness. So we learned from this how God covers the multitude of our sins and is our great protector. In fact, while I’m not a big fan of the King James’ choice of words in First Corinthians 13:7, as we’ve seen, the way we think of the word “bears” is a little different than what the word he used indicates, this word does reflect part of what this word means. You see, like a mama “bear”, God’s heart is to protect His cubs. Yes, His great love for us leads him to defend & protect. Amen! We then looked at what Paul says at the end of verse 7 of how love “endures all things.” Now this one sounds a little more like what love “bears all things” seemed to mean, and I made the point that this time, I believe the translators got it right. You see, the word the apostle Paul used here was the Greek word hupomeno, and this word was a staple in the New Testament. In fact, in the early New Testament church, this virtue was treasured and highly valued by Christians. It’s the virtue most often translated “patience” in the New Testament. However, while patience is an “okay” translation, endurance is a much better one because the word literally means to “remain under” which denotes perseverance and endurance. So because of this, some have called this virtue, “staying under” power. So, for instance, you have a lot of pressure put on you, yet you don’t let that difficult thing move you, but you endure it by resolving to “stay under” it. Therefore, I see endurance as more of the picture being painted by this word rather than patience. And one of the reasons I think this is important to understand is because, when it comes to love, there’s a little difference between being patient with people and enduring them. How many times have we quit on a person in our lives because we simply didn’t feel we could take any more? So, like with the definition of hupomeno, we were unwilling to “stay under” the things that they did and just the way they were. Some of us have quit jobs because of a boss who was difficult to endure. Some of us have left churches because of parishioners who were difficult to get along with. Even some of us have left spouses because they were simply intolerable. Now some of those situations might certainly have been acceptable to move on from, but I think that in a lot of cases, we might not have abided by this attribute of love that “endures all things.” The fact of whether or not we are guilty of this from decisions made in the past is not the point. The point is, however, that from this day forward we ask the Lord to direct us into when it is time to endure in love or move on from the situation. I’ve just learned in many situations how a lot of times when I was ready to throw my towel in on a person that by simply enduring through the tough seasons, we were able to make it through them and see a lot of fruit as a result. Therefore, those feelings & emotions that we experience when we are at odds with a person are not to be trusted. They will even try to trick us into thinking God is leading us to do this or that, which usually is in line with what our flesh would want in the situation. But the fact is, feelings are fickle, and emotions are not to be trusted. Just ask the Holy Spirit within you, “What would love do here?” But our point from this was this is exactly what the Lord has done with every one of us! Did you know that Love Himself has had to endure plenty of things with us? Yes, the Lord has endured at least as much with you as He has with that person you have a hard time enduring. So if I live in that reality instead of being puffed up to think that I am better than those who irritate me, I’ll live in the sober reality that I need as much mercy as they do and will have an easier time tolerating their shortcomings. It’s tight but it’s right. So yes, since God is love, He certainly endures all things with you and I. He does not quit on us when we “act a fool.” He doesn’t terminate His relationship with us when we annoy Him. No, He endures our inadequacies. He puts up with our flaws. He tolerates our mistakes. All because He loves us so! Oh, how He loves us! Yes, His love “endures” forever! EVERYTHING? Now this week, I want us to cover the other two things Paul mentioned in First Corinthians 7 – “… (Love) believes all things, hopes all things …” As I made the point of last week, the word “things” was added by the translators. So this actually reads – “(Love) believes all, hopes all.” This is important because like I said, the phrase “all things” can leave the impression that we are to believe & hope in EVERYTHING, and that’s just not true. Let me explain … I believe it’s rather obvious that God does not expect us to believe and trust in “everything” that we hear from and about others. If I did that, I would believe every rumor, all the gossip, and every lie that people speak about other people. In fact, God spent a good portion of the New Testament warning us that some of the things we hear are false and are to not be believed. First John 4:1 says, “My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world” (The Message Bible). Not only are we to not blindly believe everything we hear, but we also cannot put our “hope” in people either. No, we cannot “expect” (Lit. definition of “hope”) people to do the right thing because human beings are flawed, and we are always capable of letting others down. Now we can look for it and desire it, but according to the literal definition of hope, we cannot have a confident expectation in man. Now we can place high expectations on Him, but expecting things from others is a recipe for disappointment. So it is not that a Christian who is walking in love has stripped himself of all wisdom and discernment – that he or she has forgotten how to distinguish between black from white. Instead, this verse is descriptive of Paul’s view of love, and the main point is that God’s love believes in and hopes for the best – a point we will get into momentarily. So, yes, it’s important to understand that love is what is being described here. So the subject matter is how love behaves towards the objects of its love. Therefore, this verse is not just a blanket statement that we are to believe everything we hear and hope in everyone we come across. This much is obvious. However, when it comes to how we are loving others, faith in people and hope for them are things that love will always do. So let’s begin looking at these two phrases and discover a couple more of love’s attributes. Let’s start with “believes all things.” BELIEVES ALL This phrase “believes all” has different shades of meaning. Let’s look at a few other translations: After translating this phrase “believes all things,” the Amplified Bible adds “looking for the best in each one.” Along these lines, the ISV says, “believes the best in all.” So from this perspective, “believing all” is to believe the best in all. In other words, love is not cynical by nature. No, it’s not pessimistic, but it trusts by default. Therefore, love tends towards giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, this does not mean that love is gullible and will accept just anything as the truth. What it does mean, however, is that while love might certainly be aware of the truth, it chooses to magnify something else instead. In other words, while love is not blind (contrary to what the world likes to say), it does focus on the positives in the other person more than their negatives. You see, the idiom "love is blind" implies that people do not see the faults of the people that they love. Well, while that certainly can be the tendency, the truth is that love is not ignorant. No, all this means is that love will tend towards overshadowing any negative traits or actions. So the notion is that love will make one overlook or ignore the loved one's flaws, mistakes, or undesirable behaviors. Therefore, the phrase "love is blind" means that when people are in love, they are often oblivious to or tolerant of their loved one's imperfections. So the truth in this is that love chooses to overlook the wrong and focus on the good. Love chooses to pay attention to someone's strengths, rather than their weaknesses. It is for this reason that I like the Living Bible’s translation. It says, “you will always believe in him (the person you are loving).” The New Living Translation puts it this way – Love “never loses faith (in others)” This obviously describes how love will believe in people, and never quit on them. To me, this is more of the idea that is being expressed here – believing in another person, not simply believing everything they tell you. Which leads us to the next description of love – how it “hopes all.” HOPES ALL While the last phrase dealt more with having faith in people, this one deals with the subject of faith’s partner, hope. Now this particular word is one that requires a deeper look – because our idea of hope is a little different than the Lord’s. This Greek word for “hope” is defined in my study bible as- “hope, not in a sense of an optimistic outlook or wishful thinking without any foundation, but in a sense of confident expectation based on solid certainty.” So based on this definition, Bible hope is not the way we use it in the world today. It’s not “wishful thinking” or having an “optimistic outlook.” No, hope is more certain than that. Bible hope has more of a foundation underneath it than that! When the New Testament speaks of hope, it speaks of having a confident expectation which is based on solid certainty. I like to use the example that, for instance, someone has been promised by another individual that they would come pick them up at the airport. Well, if you asked that person who was flying- “Do you have someone picking you up at the airport?” and they responded with- “I hope my friend is” what would you think? You would be thinking that they are not sure. You would think that they doubt whether or not their friend will show up, right? Yes, what you would hear them saying is that they sure would like for that to happen, or they had the desire for their friend to pick them up but weren’t sure if they would come through for them. However, if we are “hoping” the way the New Testament speaks of hope, we are certain that it is going to happen, and we are expecting it as a result. Amen! That’s a far cry from what we are saying when we say, “We hope something will happen.” If we are speaking elpis (New Testament “hope”), we are saying, “Oh yeah, I absolutely expect it to happen! I’m certain of it!” So what does this mean to say that love “hopes all”? Well, when you look at hope as it is used in the New Testament, this “expectation” is usually tied to some future blessing like Heaven, the Second Coming of Jesus, the Resurrection, etc. So when it comes to this description of love, we can see that love has more of an expectation of something good tied to it. Therefore, if I am loving someone else, then I will have a similar hope for them – that is, I will hope, wish, desire, and expect blessings to befall them. I will hope these good things will happen to them like I would that they happen to me. Yes, everything I hope for from God for myself, I will hope from God for the ones I love – which includes them reaching the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. In other words, I will expect them to reach their God-given potential. Yes, if I love someone, I will desire that they are blessed, I’ll wish God’s best for them, and I’ll be optimistic that they will receive what He wants for them. But if I “hope all” for them, then that means that I will have a confident expectation of something good happening in their life. DOES GOD BELIEVE & HOPE? Now as we talk about how love will believe in people and how it’s hope is that they will reach their God-given potential, the question begs to be answered – Does God do this? Does God believe in all and hope for all? Sure, He does because if He is love (which He is) and this is what love does (which it does), then God believes & hopes all! No question! I think it is interesting that one might acknowledge that God expects faith out of His people and commands us to hope in Him, yet they don’t think that He practices the same towards them. I understand that is natural to just believe that faith & hope are solely to be aimed at Him since He is the object of our faith & hope, but I can assure you, God practices what He preaches. Yes, He doesn’t give us a standard that He will not live by Himself. So if He is pleased when His children believe in Him and what He has said (See Hebrews 11:6), then wouldn’t it also please Him to believe is us? Well, the fact is, God’s faith in His creation and His hope in His people is all throughout the Bible if you have eyes to see it. So let’s look at some Scriptural examples that shows how God doesn’t lose faith in me, how He believes the best in you, and how His hope in us never wanes. Let’s start in the Beginning, where we see an example that this was even the case with His original creation: We see in this first couple of chapters of this Book called the Bible that God began by creating this world and all that is in and around it. So, this planet was a good work that He began, in that, after He created it, He said that it was “very good.” But we all know what happened— Adam, who was given authority over this planet, allowed the serpent in and sinned, letting sin reign instead of him. This caused the curse to enter the world, which created a ripple effect to where everything in this physical world is dying. Yes, the sin has brought the curse and death in and, in the natural, our future looks bleak. But the gospel is this: God showed us that the good work He began in the beginning, He will finish in the end. You see, just as the first two chapters of the Bible open up by declaring God creating His original creation, the last two chapters of the same Bible conclude with how God will provide the new creation at the end of time. Isn’t that interesting? So, it as if the entire Bible is surrounded with God’s purpose and plan for His creation—for it begins with God’s original creation and ends with His new creation. Therefore, everything in between is the process of God restoring what the First Adam lost in the fall. And the consummation is the new heavens and the new earth, when Christ will return and reign here from the New Jerusalem. So, we can see that, with everything from this physical world we live in, to our very own lives, God began a good work and has promised to complete that good work when Christ returns. And what this teaches us is that all that is contained between these four chapters (Genesis 1-2 & Revelation 21-22) in no way indicates that God will not finish what He started. What I mean is this, that all of the bumps along the road where mankind would fail and where Satan would try and stop God’s plan seemed to indicate that God is not taking us to the other side. But throughout the Old Testament, we see God never losing faith in His chosen people… It started with God calling a man named Abram out of the pagan world he lived in and promising to make a great nation from him. He believed so much in this man that He changed His name to reflect what He saw in Him, calling him “Abraham” the father of many nations. So, through a process of events, we get the Twelve Tribes of Jacob, and a nation was birthed – Israel. And they were far from perfect. Even though there were certainly good times in their kingdom where good kings reigned such as David, Solomon, Asa, Josiah, Jehoshaphat, etc., there were also bad times when there were bad kings on the throne. And how many times in the Old Testament did Israel fail God? It can be somewhat discouraging to read how many times they made mistakes and turned from the Living God. Well, we need not make the mistake of thinking that we are better than they were. For one, how do we know how we would have responded if we were in the same situation? Secondly, we already do make similar mistakes. It’s just not as obvious because our lives are not chronicled like Israel’s was. Yet, even though we clearly see their continual failure, their failure was never final. No, God gave them second, third, fourth, etc., etc., etc. chances. Why? Because love never says die. In fact, even though they made their mistakes, which led to them experiencing loss and captivity, this did not mean that God was finished with them. In fact, we see through the Prophet Jeremiah, that even in midst of their failures, God’s faithfulness abounded. Some of our most popular & familiar verses paint a beautiful picture of His faith & hope … In Lamentations chapter 3, we see how the Prophet Jeremiah had almost given up hope because of their circumstances. But then his hope was restored again, when He remembered the mercies of God. This is that familiar section of verses when he said, “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” (Lamentations 3:21-24). So what Jeremiah was doing was recalling how it was through the Lord’s mercies that they were not completely consumed and, because of God’s great faithfulness, we should be instilled with hope. How about Jeremiah 29:11, where in the midst of Israel’s failures, they had been carried away captive by Nebuchadnezzar & Babylon? This certainly seemed like a bleak & hopeless situation. Yet the Lord had Jeremiah write them a letter for Him, and contained in that letter is that very popular verse that says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” So by saying, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you …”, it is as if God was saying, “You guys think you know what I’m thinking of you. You act like you know what my plans are. But you have no idea. I, on the other hand, know the thoughts I’m thinking towards you and know the plans I have for you, and they are …” You see, the Lord’s thoughts are usually higher than our thoughts. In other words, we think on this lower level of the earth where we are ready to quit on people at the drop of a dime. Therefore, we think God is thinking like we think. It’s just natural to think like that. Ya think? But no, we see here that even though they had made their own bed – having gotten themselves into this predicament by turning to other gods and then not heeding the original words of Jeremiah – that God’s plan was NOT for them to sleep in it. No! His heart was “thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give them a FUTURE and a HOPE.” Amen! So do you suppose this way of thinking has changed with God regarding you? Do you think that perhaps that you are too far gone by your own poor choices? Well, if so, then the Lord is saying to you today – “I know the thoughts I think towards you. Yeah, you might think this is how I’m thinking, but I can assure you my plan is one of HOPE.” You see, God always believes in His people, and He always has hope. He never says die. He abounds in hope, and He wants His people to abound in hope as well. This reminds me of a New Testament verse where God is called the God of Hope. Yes, Romans 15:13 says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So that means that God has hope to give because He has hope to give. In other words, all true hope comes from Him as He is the God of Hope. Thus the reason we see love described as “hopes all things”—because God is love and He hopes all things. Now let’s look at a few New Testament verses that describe God’s faith & hope in the work that He started in us … Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Notice that this is something we can all be confident in—that if God started something, He will finish it. It’s not something we have to wonder about. It is without question. If God began it, He will complete what He started. We can absolutely put our faith and trust in this! And the reason we can be confident in this is because we see it throughout the Scriptures: Time and time again, we see in God’s Word that the things God starts, He either completed them already or He plans to finish them. Now regarding Philippians 1:6, let’s look at what the apostle Paul said we can be confident in: He said that the good work God began in them, He will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. In the case of the Church of Philippi, it was God who started the good work in them. This church was not started because these Philippians willed it. Nor did it begin because the apostle Paul wanted it to happen. The good work that began in the Church of Philippi was because of God. Now I understand that this needs to be clarified because, sure, both the apostle Paul had to be willing to go and preach to them and they had to be willing to hear and believe him, but what we must also understand is that even though our wills are involved in anything God desires to do in our lives, all the grace for these things to happen comes from God and, therefore, all the glory goes to Him as well. Yes, God began this good work in the Philippians by both equipping, anointing, and calling Paul to preach the gospel to them and by gracing the Philippians to hear and receive the gospel. Sure, it could be viewed that if Paul would not have been willing to go to Macedonia, this church never would have been established. But that’s assuming God would not have sent someone else. Sure, we can choose not to go where God sends us and do what He sends us to do, but God is going to accomplish His purposes. And even when it comes to Paul being willing to go, it was all God’s grace that enabled him to be effective in the first place. So, my point is that this good work that began in the Philippians had begun because of God. It truly was He, and Him alone, who had begun this good work. Well, just as He Himself began it, He Himself will complete it: Notice the verbiage in the second half of Philippians 1:6 when Paul says, “…He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” This is essentially saying that the same One who began the good work in the Philippians will be the One who completes that good work in them. In other words, God Himself will finish the good work He began. Now how did He begin this good work in us? It was by His grace and through our faith, right? It is crystal clear that we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). So, if this is how we were saved (which the Greek word for “saved” is also translated “made physically well or whole”), then this is how we live the saved life, right? Colossians 2:6 teaches us this: It says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” So, how did you receive Him? By grace! So how are you supposed to walk in Him (speaking of our everyday conduct)? The obvious answer is by grace! God sanctified our spirit completely by grace when we received Him and now, He is wanting to sanctify our soul by grace while we are living in this body. Let’s now look over at First Thessalonians 5:23-24. Paul says in this epistle in verse 23, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless…” Notice that Paul put the pronoun “Himself” after mentioning God. Why did he include that pronoun? I believe it was because Paul was attempting to clarify that God was going to be the one doing the sanctifying without any help from us. God was going to do it HIMSELF! He is not going to even let us help Him! Why? Because He wants all the glory! God is going to make sure that our whole spirit, soul, and body is going to be preserved blameless! Notice what verse 24 goes on to say – “He who call you is faithful, who also will do it!” God is faithful to complete the good work that He began in us! He absolutely will do it! My point is that their mistakes did not nullify God’s plan and purpose for them. Sure, it led to some delays, but those delays were in no way to be considered denials—for God remains faithful even when we are faithless (See Second Timothy 2:13). He has promised that in the end, He will restore His original covenant people, and there will be a revival in Israel. You see, sometimes we think God is done with us because of the mistakes that we’ve made. We think we’ve nullified His plan for our lives because we’ve turned from His plan too many times. But when we consider Israel, we must conclude that God will never quit on us—especially when our covenant is written not in the blood of bulls and goats, but in the precious blood of Jesus Christ! Amen! Praise God, church, God will never, ever, quit on us! If He began a good work, He will see it through! He is faithful even when we are faithless, and He was, is, and evermore shall be the God of hope! Amen! REVIEW
Today, we begin part 13 of our series on being “Imitators of Love” where we are learning more about the nature & characteristics of God by looking at the nature & characteristics of love. What we have been camping on most recently is that great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13, and looking at Paul’s description of both love and God, who is love. In light of this, First Corinthians 13:4-8 describes Him like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we looked at verse 6 that teaches us what love does and does not rejoice in. Now we learned that to “rejoice” simply means to be glad, cheerful, or to get excited about something. So if the apostle Paul is talking about love’s characteristics, then there are obviously certain things that love will and will not become glad or excited about. Yes, it will rejoice with those who rejoice by getting happy when good things happen to them, and at the same time, it will certainly not rejoice when bad things happen to them. So what we learned from this is that love for others will essentially do the same thing as love for one’s self – it will get happy when good things happen to others like people get happy when good things happen to themselves. We saw, specifically, what Paul said that love does not rejoice in is “injustice or unrighteousness,” which means that love certainly does not get joy out of seeing others being done wrong. Which showed us a lot about the heart of God and how His pet peeve is when His people do not practice justice & righteousness. But our greatest takeaway from this is how God practiced this towards us, and how we were the widows that He provided for by actually marrying us and how we were the orphans that He cared for by adopting us into His family! So God absolutely rejoices in justice! But Paul also stated specifically that love DOES rejoice in truth. So we looked over at Third John and saw the heart of God through the apostle John when he said in Third John 1-4, “The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” In this opening greeting, we noted the constant echo of the terms “love, joy, and truth” in these opening four verses of Third John. So this is God’s heart! He loves to see His children walking in the truth, which includes when His kids are prospering on all fronts, when they are healthy, and when they are growing up spiritually. He gets no joy out of us walking in injustice & unrighteousness – meaning, He never takes pleasure when we are not experiencing Third John 2. No, in His love, God wishes His best on us, and He rejoices when His best is experienced. Amen. ALL THINGS Now in verse 7, we have what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So what’s the common denominator found in this verse? It’s the repeated phrase – “all things.” Now in the original language, we don’t find the word “things.” It was added by the translators to help us understand better what was being communicated. However, I don’t believe adding this word exactly does that here. No, the phrase “all things” can leave the impression that we are to bear, believe, hope, and endure EVERYTHING, and that’s just not true. For example, its obvious that God does not expect us to believe all things that we hear when he spent a good portion of the New Testament warning us that some of the things we hear are false and are to not be believed. Also, it’s also very clear that we are not to endure everything also because in doing so, we might be putting up with and tolerating things that the Lord certainly doesn’t want us enduring, namely the kingdom of darkness and its works. No, it’s important to understand that love is what is being described here. So the subject matter is how love behaves towards the objects of its love. Therefore, this verse is not just a blanket statement that we are to put up with everything or to believe everything we hear. This much is obvious. However, when it comes to how we are loving others, these are things that love will always do. So let’s start this week breaking down the four terms we have in this verse – this week by covering “bears & endures”, and next week by covering “believes & hopes.” BEARS OR COVERS? When Paul starts off by saying, “(Love) bears all things”, what he was literally saying was that love “covers & conceals.” It describes protecting someone by covering, concealing, or hiding them. In fact, the root word for this one that Paul used in First Corinthians 13:7 was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, the idea of both covering & protecting is what is being indicated. So this is what love does? It covers. It hides. It shelters. Therefore, it keeps and protects. Like a roof of a building is designed to do this for us physically. Now this requires some explanation because in some ways, hiding or covering something might not be love at all. For example, if I am concealing truth in certain situations, I might be doing the exact opposite of what love demands because truth is not to be hidden. So I have to determine whether love would dictate whether or not speaking the truth in a situation is appropriate. Now I know there is a large contingent of people who believe that speaking the truth is always appropriate, but that’s not necessarily true either. There are times where love will zip its lips, be slow to speak, etc. and not broadcast something even though it is 100% sure that it’s true. The way you know when it is appropriate to speak the truth is found in Ephesians 4:15 when Paul taught us how we are to speak the truth in love. So how does this show us when we are to speak the truth? It’s when it can be done in love. In other words, ask yourself the question when you have the thought to speak something you know is true – Who am I loving by saying this, and how am I loving them? Asking this question can keep us from sharing things that aren’t what wisdom would have us share at the moment. You see, one characteristic of love is that it will cover sin. In quoting from the Book of Proverbs, First Peter 4:8 says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” So love does cover. It will conceal. It will hide some things. That means that true, fervent love for one another is not going to expose sin; it’s going to cover it. And what are those things? The apostle Peter says, “a multitude of sins.” No, not just some sin, but a “multitude” of them. That means that it doesn’t matter how many times they have committed the same sin or how many times they have even sinned against us, love will cover their multitude of sins. Regarding this latter point, this reminds of what Jesus told His disciples in Matthew chapter 18 when Peter asked the Lord how many times they must forgive their offending brother, “up to seven times?” Well, the Lord’s response of “up to seventy times seven” sounds a lot like love forgiving a “multitude” of sins because seventy times seven is certainly a multitude of offenses. One of the greatest Biblical examples I can think of that illustrates this is found the story of Noah: You know, after the flood, the Bible teaches us something about Noah and his sons. Genesis 9:20-27 says, “And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.’ And he said: ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his servant.’” Now I want you to notice what this illustrates – Noah made a mistake and was “uncovered” as a result. So when his youngest son, Ham, discovered his nakedness, what did he do? He went and told his brothers. No, he didn’t attempt to cover the multitude of his father’s sin, but he exposed him even further. But the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, when they heard it, went into his tent backwards with a garment to cover him with. Yes, the Bible says that their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness. This is symbolic of how nobility and honor will not focus on other’s shortcomings & mistakes but will choose to cover their sin. Amen! And notice what the result of this situation was: When Noah woke up and learned what had happened, he both blessed Shem and Japheth and cursed the son of Ham, Canaan. Isn’t that interesting that Noah did not curse Ham, but the fruit of his body, Canaan? That teaches me that people who don’t abide by this principle of love that covers can see the fruit of their life cursed as a result. In other words, the fallout of not covering the multitude of other’s sins can be us experiencing an uphill battle when it comes to the fruit we want to produce for the Lord. I say this to simply say that it is in our best interest to cover other’s sins & mistakes and not go around broadcasting them to other people. I mean, how could this be love anyway? No, we wouldn’t want others doing that to us, right? No, we would hope that others wouldn’t go around exposing our flaws to others. And why? Because we love ourselves. So this is a call to do to others what we would have them do to us. Amen? STAYING UNDER POWER Now let’s move on to the other phrase in this verse that I wanted to “cover” (no pun intended) … Then Paul says at the end of verse 7 that love “endures all things.” Now this one sounds a little more like what love “bears all things” seemed to mean, and this time, I believe the translators got it right. You see, the word the apostle Paul used here was the Greek word hupomeno, and this word was a staple in the New Testament. In fact, in the early New Testament church, this virtue was treasured and highly valued by Christians. You’ve read about it – it’s the virtue most often translated “patience” in the New Testament. However, while patience is an “okay” translation, endurance is a much better one because the word literally means to “remain under” which denotes perseverance and endurance. So because of this, some have called this virtue, “staying under power.” So, like say you have a lot of pressure put on you, yet you don’t let that difficult thing move you, but you endure it by resolving to “stay under” it. Therefore, I see endurance as more of the picture being painted by this word rather than patience. And one of the reasons I think this is important to understand is because, when it comes to love, there’s a little difference between being patient with people and enduring them. You see, how many times have we quit on a person in our lives because we simply didn’t feel we could take any more. So, like with the definition of hupomeno, we were unwilling to “stay under” the things that they did and just the way they were. Some of us have quit jobs because of a boss who was difficult to endure. Some of us have left churches because of parishioners who were difficult to get along with. Even some of us have left spouses because they were simply intolerable. Now some of those situations might certainly have been acceptable to move on from, but I think that in a lot of cases, we might not have abided by this attribute of love that “endures all things.” The fact of whether or not we are guilty of this from decisions made in the past is not the point. The point is, however, that from this day forward we ask the Lord to direct us into when it is time to endure in love or move on from the situation. I’ve just learned in many situations how a lot of times when I was ready to throw my towel in on a person that by simply enduring through the tough seasons, we were able to make it through them and see a lot of fruit as a result. Therefore, those feelings & emotions that we experience when we are at odds with a person are not to be trusted. They will even try to trick us into thinking God is leading us to do this or that, which usually is in line with what our flesh would want in the situation. But the fact is, feelings are fickle, and emotions are not to be trusted. Just ask the Holy Spirit within you, “What would love do here?” Just know this – We live in a world full of different people. How many of you know that people are people, and very few of them are like you? This is because, at birth, we were wired by God a certain way and also because we’ve been molded by life’s circumstances. Therefore, since we are all different, it can be a little difficult handling other folk’s personalities. Well, that’s where this attribute of love comes in. Love “endures” all those people that our flesh has a hard time tolerating. But don’t mistake this as us simply putting up with or tolerating other people. While that might be what we need to do at times, the key is found in coming to know & understand those who irritate us. In other words, enduring people is better than being intolerant, but the best way is to actually love them, which enables you to endure them. For example, it’s kind of how most of us “endure” the irritating things our own flesh & blood might do more than we put up with a stranger who does the same thing. Why do we do that? It’s because we actually love our family members, and strangers, not so much. But the truth is that the more you come to get to know the one you are having to “endure,” the more you can stir up the right kind of thinking to go from just tolerating them to actually loving them. Yes, I believe our understanding of others can equip us with the necessary compassion, sympathy, and empathy to, in love, endure all the things they do that offend us. Why? Because we are not just seeing the way they are now or what they are currently doing to us; we see why they are the way they are, and why they might be doing the things they are to us. This has helped me tremendously. COVERS ALL & ENDURES FOREVER But do you know what else helps us both endure others and cover their sins? It’s the truth that Love Himself has had to endure plenty of things with us too and also cover a multitude of our sins! I know none of us probably thinks that there is much to be endured with us – with others, certainly; but with us, maybe. No, get ready for another truth bomb here: The Lord has endured as much with you as He has with that person you have a hard time enduring. So if I live in that reality instead of being puffed up to think that I am better than those who irritate me, I’ll live in the sober reality that I need as much mercy as they do and will have an easier time tolerating their shortcomings. Likewise, if I live in the awareness of how much the Lord has had to cover in my life, then I will be more apt to cover other’s sins, right? It’s tight but it’s right. Yes, like we’ve been learning throughout this series, if these are things that love does, then they are something God does. Yes, GOD covers a multitude of our sins and GOD endures forever! Let’s first look at how God covers all … Aren’t you thankful for this – that God doesn’t air out all of our dirty laundry before people and how He doesn’t remind us of our failures & shortcomings? He really doesn’t. One of our best examples of this are the very Scriptures that He inspired … Have you ever noticed as you read the Bible how God does not magnify the mistakes of His elect. Sure, He states truth & facts of the shortcomings of them, but the spirit behind it is different. It’s not what stands out. Like for example, we see in the story of Abraham the fact that he lied to save his own neck when asked if Sarah was his wife. How many of you know that if a preacher did that today, it would have been on the cover of charisma magazine!?! How about David with how he committed adultery with another man’s wife and then had him murdered!?! That certainly would not have gotten that man of God any more speaking engagements, right? Then how about Peter? Sure, we see the weaknesses in this man, but what is it that we walk away seeing Peter as? The ROCK! I could go through a lot of examples of this, but God, in the Scriptures, lauds His people more than He uncovers them. And that’s what we are to do as well – magnify their strengths and good works more than we uncover and expose their weaknesses and the bad things they do. Why? Because that’s what love does! So for anyone who might have thought that God was bringing up your past and constantly reminding you of all the bad things you’ve done, that’s NOT Him. No, if love covers a multitude of sins, then that’s what God does too. Therefore, the condemnation & guilt that folks constantly carry around with them is not coming from God. No, He separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. He said our sins & lawless deeds He will remember no more. So if He has separated us from our sin and He is choosing to not remember them anymore, why on earth would He be the One reminding you of them? He ain’t! No, the reason we “hear” about our sin on the inside of us is because of one of two things – either it’s the devil feeding us lies and doing what He does best, condemn, or it’s our own heart condemning us (See First John 3:20). You see, some of the things we hear, feel, etc. are the product of what we believe in our heart. Like, for example, some of us have been trained by the world or religion that we ought to feel bad when we do something wrong, among other things. So when we miss it, our heart communicates things to us that are along the lines of our previous programming. Then other things are straight from the pit of hell, through outside demonic sources. I’m not sure a lot of people realize this, but the devil will oftentimes speak things into our minds that can be misconstrued as our own thoughts. And one of his most favorite weapons of His warfare is condemnation. So those thoughts that come into our minds that remind us of our mistakes, which lead to guilt, are possibly from the devil. But my point is this – they are NOT from God. That’s not to say that God never deals with the issue of sin and won’t convict us, but there’s a big difference between conviction & condemnation, and we best learn the difference. And why? Because God covers a multitude of sins and certainly doesn’t uncover us! But why does He do this? Yes, it’s because He loves us, but more specifically, it’s because He seeks to protect us! You see, one thing that is clear throughout the Scriptures is God’s desire to protect us. There are tons of Scriptures that clearly illustrate this, and even entire Psalms devoted to it (i.e. Psalm 91). But I don’t know if we always consider why God’s heart is to protect us; it’s because He loves us and that’s just what love does! And while I’m not a big fan of the King James’ choice of words in First Corinthians 13:7, as we’ve seen, the way we think of the word “bears” is a little different than what the word he used indicates, this word does reflect part of what this word means. You see, like a mama “bear”, God’s heart is to protect His cubs. Yes, His great love for us leads him to defend & protect. Amen! But yes, since God is love, He certainly covers & protects, but He also endures all things with you and I. He does not quit on us when we act a fool. He doesn’t terminate His relationship with us when we annoy Him. No, He endures our inadequacies. He puts up with our flaws. He tolerates our mistakes. All because He loves us so! Oh, how He loves us! What is the single most used “praise phrase” in the Bible? What is the statement we see repeated time and time again throughout the Scriptures where His people are praising Him? It is this – “For the Lord is good, for His mercy endures forever.” How many times is this in the Bible? A whole bunch! But I want you to notice what is contained in the “phrase of praise” – His mercy (which is the covenant love of the Lord) and how that steadfast love endures forever! That sounds a little to me like “love endures all things,” doesn’t it to you? So in this true statement of praise – the Lord inspired His people to magnify two major parts of His nature – His goodness and His endurance. So even though love “enduring” all things might be close to the last characteristic of love that Paul mentions in First Corinthians 13, it is one of the first things that we see God praised for in the Scriptures! Amen! REVIEW
So after a couple of weeks off, I want us to pick back up this week on the series we have been doing for several months now on being “Imitators of Love.” In this series of teachings, we are learning more about our God, but not in the traditional manner of studying Scriptures that talk about His nature. No, we are looking at the verses that teach us how we ought to be loving one another with the understanding that these instructions/commandments must be the same way that God loves us. In other words, we are learning about the nature & characteristics of God by looking at the nature & characteristics of love. So, the specific passage of Scripture that we have been camping on is what I consider to be the best section of verses that teach us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us the nature of love – what it is and what it is not. But since we understand that God is love, we learned how we can substitute the term “God” for “love” here and learn what God’s nature is. So let’s do that now— “GOD suffers long and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we looked at the end of verse 5, where we are told that love thinks no evil. So as we’ve all heard of that old proverb principle in the world that says – “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”, the Bible speaks of another element to this – “Think No Evil.” We asked the question – how is this even possible? How is one able to “think NO evil”? Because for example, we read in the Bible more than once that Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for their “evil” ways, describing them with words like “liars, hypocrites,” and even “children of the devil." Well, that sounds like Jesus was certainly “thinking” some “evil” of these guys, right? So how do we reconcile examples like this with the law of love that says we are not to even think evil of others much less call them out on their evil? Yes, how can we as Christians keep from thinking evil of others, especially when it is the Bible itself that talks about how evil exists in mankind? That seems contradictory. On top of that, I don’t think it is the Lord’s intention that we go around pretending that evil doesn't exist either. No, we saw how this is where it is important that we understand how to look up the words the writer used in the original language, and also how to utilize other translations. In doing so, we can come to understand what was truly being conveyed here instead of letting whatever terminology our Bible uses determine our interpretation of it. We saw how this phrase would better be translated “(love) does not keep a record or account of evil & wrongs”, and this is actually how most translations translate this phrase. So this is a very helpful piece of information for our love walk: You see, if I ever say or think something to the effect of – “You do this all the time!” or “This is the 3rd time you did that” – then I am not operating in love because why? Love isn’t counting. No, it’s not adding up and recounting all the times someone has done something. But we learned that this is also how God is towards us! He doesn’t keep a record of our faults! He doesn’t recall our mistakes! In fact, He is not even considering how many times you and I have missed it. We have a lot of other Scriptures that substantiate this about God, and we went through some of them. Verses like:
So it is written in the mouth of multiple witnesses that I am one of the blessed whose sins are covered—of which the Lord will remember no more. He chooses not to remember my sins and blots out my transgressions for His name’s sake. Praise the Lord! Church, this is how God thinks no evil and reveals to us what He thinks of you and I. Yes, His thoughts for us that outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore are good thoughts, not evil ones. This is how love thinks, counting the good, true, and lovely things of the ones it loves. God thinks no evil; only good. This is what Jeremiah 29:11 conveys to us. And we also learned how these precious thoughts He thinks of us are not hidden from us. No, we can know them! In fact, He desires for us to know them. That’s why He said (after that oft quoted verse that His thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways and they are past finding out) that He pours these “high” things from the heavens like rain & snow. Amen! That means He wants you and I to know those lofty thoughts, and He went on to say how they are known by His Word. Therefore, if you and I are going to come to know what God is thinking, then we need to study to show ourselves approved. Yes, we need to behold His written Word and let the thoughts of God become, in us, the mind of Christ. So the fact is, God does want us to know His thoughts and ways, and they are certainly aimed towards us. Yes, as the Lord told us to set our minds on things above, He sets His mind on us below. That’s right – We are His focus! Therefore, as Psalm 139:17-18 says, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand …” Let that truth penetrate your heart today. And all of this is because the Lord loves us! Just as when we fall in love, one characteristic of that love is our minds become filled with that other person. We think about them all the time when we are at the height of that love. And why are we thinking so much of that person? It is because they are in our heart! Saints, God actually holds us in His heart! He does not just tolerate us or make Himself “have to” think good things about us. No, He thinks good thoughts about us because we hold a special place in His heart! In other words, we are important to Him because you do not rent space in your heart to people or things that are not important to you. No, what is in your heart is what is valuable to you! Therefore, we must be extremely valuable to the Lord if His heart and mind are so inclined towards us! Amen! LOVE REJOICES So now let’s move into First Corinthians 13:6 where Paul goes on to describe not only what love doesn’t do, but also what it does do. In this verse, he said, “(Love) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” First of all, I want you to notice how Paul is essentially describing both what love will rejoice in and what it will not rejoice in. Therefore, rejoicing is the point of this verse. Now to “rejoice” simply means to be glad, cheerful, or to get excited about something. So if the apostle Paul is talking about love’s characteristics, then there are obviously certain things that love will and will not become glad or excited about. But did you even know that love rejoices? It sure does! It will get happy about some things while it certainly won’t get joy out of certain other things happening. Now the fact is, most people certainly get happy when good things happen to them. Yes, that’s what the majority rejoices in. But what does love do? It will rejoice when good things happen to others, and it certainly doesn’t rejoice when bad things happen to them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, the Bible says (Romans 12:15). And what this is instructing us to do is to actually get as happy & glad as the other person is. Yes, these are not two different words that Paul used, so rejoicing with those who rejoice describes personally getting as excited as the other person does. And why? All because you love them! So what we can learn from this is that love for others will essentially do the same thing as love for one’s self – it will get happy when good things happen to others like people get happy when good things happen to themselves. WHAT LOVE DOES NOT REJOICE IN But I want you to notice how Paul describes what love does not rejoice in first. And he says that it’s in “iniquity.” This is actually a poor translation because the word Paul used was used more to describe “injustice or unrighteousness.” Therefore, specifically what Paul had in mind here was that love did not get excited when it sees injustice or unrighteousness occurring. Now this has different shades of meanings, but one obvious truth we can find in it is that we are not to rejoice when justice isn’t being done. In other words, we shouldn’t get happy when we see a person not being done “right.” How could that be love anyways? How could love actually get joy out of seeing someone else being done wrong? Well, perhaps one might root for someone who has been wronged to get revenge. More likely, one might desire to see someone they have offense in their heart towards fall flat on their face. I have seen it even get to the level where a person who has hate in their heart towards someone else gets joy out of some terrible thing that happens to that person because simply put, they are just bitter. So this can obviously occur on different levels, but the point is, love will not rejoice over someone else’s misfortunes. Now the fact is, this word “justice” is part of the problem. I say this because what a lot of people are looking for is people to get what they feel is coming to them. Yes, they even get joy out of making sure this “justice” is done. But that is not what Paul was saying that love rejoices in. No, it’s not about our enemies getting what they deserve or about those who have harmed others getting their due. It’s more about how love WILL NOT rejoice in the injustice & unrighteousness, not how love WILL rejoice when justice is being done. The reason I bring this up is because far too many people who have bitterness & unforgiveness in their heart want their offenders to pay for their mistakes. Yes, they are glad when that person gets what is coming to them. That’s not actually what love will do. Love will not derive joy from someone else getting punished. And if we do get happy when someone else has bad things happen to them, then we might need to deal with some issues that haven’t been resolved yet. Along these lines, I like something I read recently: This expositor recalled the experience Jacob had with the Angel of the Lord. You know, the one where Jacob wrestled with Him all night and obviously lost. Well, because Jacob was wounded in his thigh, Moses made a law that the children of Israel would not eat of the sinew in that area of the thigh. What does this teach us, you ask? Simply this – we are not to feast on the failures and shortcomings of others. I like that! Like one translation says, “Love doesn’t revel when others grovel,” This is the principle we are learning here. No, a big truth that we need to get from this is that love roots for the underdog. It isn’t a crowd follower or one that gangs up on the one that everyone is picking on. No, love looks for what is right and justice. It will stand in the gap. It will go against the flow. It will look for that one lost sheep and move heaven & hell to find them. This is what love does. LOVE DID JUSTICE Now how does all of this apply to God? Well, God obviously does not rejoice in injustice either. If you don’t know this, you need to read your Bible. Time and time again in the Scriptures we see one of the Lord’s pet peeves being injustice. Through His prophets, He is constantly correcting His chosen people in this area – of taking care of the widows and the orphans, how the poor were to be defended, and how injustices of any kind should not be tolerated. One of my favorite examples of this is Micah 6:8 where the prophet said, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Injustice and unrighteousness were obviously sore spots of Love Himself. In fact, even in the New Testament, we are told in James 1:27 that pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, which is one of the main things we see throughout the prophets of old. So as we have seen, if God commands us to do something then we can rest assure that He is already fulfilling those things Himself. So, in the case of caring for widows and orphans, who are the orphans and widows that He is already caring for? The answer is simple – We are! We were the widows that He provided for! We were the orphans that He has cared for! You see, there are two kinds of human relationships that the Word of God likens our relationship with God to under the New Covenant: Those two are a husband and wife and a father and child. So the truth is – God went above and beyond the duty that He gave us. Not only did He provide for us when we were widows, He actually married us so that He could meet our every need forever. Not only did He care for us when we were fatherless in Satan’s orphanage, He actually adopted us and made us His very own children. You see, in His great love and abundant mercy, God did more than just help us in our hopeless state. He cut a covenant with us through the blood of Jesus—making us His bride and His children. He not only rescued us from the kingdom of darkness, but He translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son! What an awesome and loving God we serve! So as the Lord laid out in Micah 6:8, He requires His people to “do justice” and to certainly not rejoice in injustice – all because He, in His joy towards justice & righteousness, extended them towards us freely by His grace! Amen! WHAT LOVE DOES REJOICE IN But what did Paul go on to say that love DOES rejoice in – It rejoices in truth. And again, that doesn’t necessarily describe when the truth comes out about a person who has done something wrong. No, love finds joy when it sees the objects of its love walking in the truth, not when it uncovers the lie. So while it’s very clear that God is not happy with injustice, what it is that brings Him joy is TRUTH! Yes, He rejoices in truth! Yes, what God gets excited about is when truth is practiced and experienced. Yes, He loves it when He sees others walking in the truth! We see a beautiful example of this in the beginning of the Epistle called Third John. In Third John 1-4, the apostle John says, “The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Now I want you to notice the constant echo of the terms “love, joy, and truth” in these opening four verses of Third John. This speaks the same thing as the verse we are covering in First Corinthians 13:6. But what people oftentimes make the mistake of is reading God’s Word of Truth through carnal glasses. In other words, with this Book, we know that the apostle John was the one who physically penned this Book of the Bible. But what we need to also realize is that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and that these holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit to author these Books of the Bible (Second Timothy 3:16 & Second Peter 1:21). Therefore, Third John is not just a Book authored by the apostle John; it is a Holy Spirit inspired Book ultimately inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is its true author. Not only that, but another error people make is that when they read that it was addressed to a specific man named Gaius, they lose sight of the fact that everything in these pages (or in this case, page, because its such a short Book) are being written to us as well. Some have commented on this verse, saying that the truth contained in it was simply the apostle John’s desire for Gaius, to whom this short letter was written. Therefore, they say that this verse does not express the will of the Lord for all believers for all time, but this is simply incorrect. For who are we to determine what parts of the Bible are intended only for the original recipients of the letters and what parts are applicable to us? If this were so, how would we know if what was written to the Romans were just promises applicable to the believers in Rome? Or how would we know if what was written to the Ephesians was just meant for the select church in Ephesus? How then would we know what parts of the Holy Scriptures were written to us? The truth is that all of the Bible was written for our admonition and instruction! All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, being God-breathed so that we can know and understand God’s will for all of our lives. He is no respecter of persons! Therefore, what He moved the apostle John to say to Gaius is what God wills for all of His children along with Gaius to receive and embrace. So, Third John is God speaking to us! So when we read in verses 3-4 how John evidently rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that was in this Gaius, that this was God’s heart as well. And oh, doesn’t this reflect the characteristic of love that we’ve been looking at today? Yes, this is the Holy Spirit’s heart of love in that He too rejoices when we walk in the truth. In fact, as we see in verse 4, the Lord has no greater joy than to hear that His children walk in truth. Now walking in the truth certainly has a bunch of meanings: For one, it is walking in Jesus, because He is the Truth. Second, it is walking in the Word of God, because His Word is truth. And thirdly, it is walking in the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth. So yes, God rejoices when we, His children, walk in His Son, His Word, and in His Spirit, but this is not all that makes God happy. Third John 2 contains some truths that show us the truth about everything God wants us to walk in … Again, Third John 2 says, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” So like we’ve seen, this is not just a verse that expresses John’s desire for Gaius; it shows us God’s will for all people for all time! So what is God’s desire for you and I? What does He rejoice when we walk in it? Well, let’s look deeper into this verse … First of all, notice that God refers to you as His “Beloved”… This means that He is addressing those who (pardon the poor English) “be-loved!” In other words, since this verse is God speaking directly to us, by calling us His “beloved”, He is letting us know that we are greatly loved by Him. You see, this simple truth, if understood correctly, should help us to embrace the truths contained in the rest of this verse that our Heavenly Father wants us to prosper in every area of our lives and live in perfect health. Why? Because how many of you parents out there who truly love your children want anything less than the best for them? No, you want them to prosper in every area of their life and you certainly don’t want them sick and suffering! Any parent that wills for their children to be sick and to suffer should be locked up with the key thrown away! Why? Because if any natural parent did the things to their children that God has been accused of doing to His, that parent would be incriminated in just about every culture or nation on the earth today. So how can we believe God is any different—especially when His love for us far outweighs any love that we have for our children? No, you “be-loved” and because God loves you so much, He wants you to succeed and prosper on all levels! Thank you, Father! And the fact that He “wants” this is reflected in this verse: Notice what the Lord starts off by saying to His beloved … He says, “I pray that you may prosper in all things.” Now the word “pray” here describes “wishing & desiring.” So this shows us what God actually wants & wills for us, His children. Again, we can certainly relate to this, right? Yes, we all wish & desire for our children to walk in prosperity & health, right? Absolutely! But are all our children walking in this? Not all of them – illustrating to us how just because God desires for this to be the case for all of us, doesn’t mean its automatically going to happen. No, like it is with our children, they must choose this lifestyle. They have to make the right decisions, which would have all started by listening to their parents at a young age and taking our advice, right? So I make this point because it answers that question that might come up that if God desires this for us, then why is it not happening for everyone. Well, the answer to that is the same as to why all of our children might not be walking in all of the things we want for them – because freewill is involved. WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF PROSPERITY So notice what the first thing is that we are told that God desires – prosperity in all things. What an awesome truth! God’s will is that we prosper in all things! Not just in some things; God wants us to prosper in everything! This leaves nothing uncovered! The word “prosper” literally means to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish. So, God wants us to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish in every area of our lives! Praise the Lord, our success, growth, and prosperity is God’s will, and He wants us to prosper in every aspect of our life. Did you know God wants you to be successful in your career? He is not just concerned with what we consider to be the “spiritual things.” He wants you to be successful and to prosper in your business, and this happens as you seek first the kingdom of God in your secular job (i.e. as you practice godly principles and make your career’s aim to glorify God and be a blessing to others). He wants you to prosper in your vocation! Did you know that God wants you to thrive in the arena of relationships? He wants you to have such a wonderful relationship with your spouse or significant other that you are in awe of the goodness and graciousness of God! He wants you to have such wonderful friends that add to you and that you can truly trust! He wants you to prosper in all of your relationships! Did you know that God wants you to flourish in your finances? He does not want you struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck! He wants you to have more than enough so that you can fulfill the blessing of Abraham that is on your life, which is being blessed, so that you can be a blessing! He wants you to prosper monetarily! You see, being able to be a blessing to others is one of the main reasons God wants you to prosper in every area of your life. Sure, He wants you to be blessed simply because He loves you and wants the best for you, but He also wants you to thrive in every area so that you will not constantly be trying to fulfill yourself and can correctly put your focus on the needs of others. If you have needs that are unmet, that takes time and attention away from meeting the needs of others. God wants our cup to overflow so that we can share with others! Thanks be unto God! WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF HEALTH Then notice what else the Holy Spirit told us that God desires for us in this verse: Not only does God want us to prosper in every area of our lives, but He also wants us to “be in health.” This verse alone should dispel the popular Christian doctrine that sometimes God sends sickness into our lives to teach us something. No, God’s will is that we are healthy, not sick. To live in sickness, disease, and infirmity is no more God’s will for our lives than for us to live in sin, transgression, and iniquity! And this is exactly what you see in Jesus’ ministry, which was a perfect reflection of God’s will (See John 14:7&9 and Hebrews 1:3)! Acts 10:38 says that Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil! Why did He go about only doing good and healing everyone who responded to Him in faith? It was because this was (and always will be) God’s will! But as great as healing is, I want you to notice that Third John 2 does not say that God wants us to prosper in all things and be “healed”; it says that God wills that we be in “health”! In other words, this verse tells us that God not only wills that we experience healing, but that we experience divine health. For example, God’s perfect will is for our bodies to be so charged with His resurrection power that when germs or viruses touch our bodies, they die immediately. His perfect plan for our lives is that everything from our eyesight, hearing, and overall health is strong and living well above the norm. And this not only includes wholeness in our physical bodies but also health in our mind and emotions. The prophet Isaiah said that the chastisement needful to obtain our peace was laid upon Him. The Apostle Paul said that the Holy Spirit has been given to us so that we can have a “sound mind.” This describes a soul that is whole and not weak and sick. Jesus purchased not only wholeness in our bodies, but also wholeness in our mind, will, and emotions! He wants us sharp and strong in our soul too. Thank you, Jesus! WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH So, God evidently has a greater vision for our lives than we do for ourselves. He wants us to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish in every area of life—which includes prospering financially, relationally, and vocationally! Not only that, but He also wants us to be whole and strong in every area of our bodies as well—which includes being healthy physically, healthy mentally, and healthy emotionally! Someone then might say, “Trey, if this is truly God’s will for everyone’s life, then why do we see so little of it fulfilled in our lives?” That is a good question; I’m glad you asked … As we’ve already learned, our free-will is the big reason, but I want to offer you one more reason that we find in this very verse. Third John 2 ends by saying that God wants you to prosper in all things and be in health “just as your soul prospers.” Now the two words “just as” are extremely important because they show us how God’s will of prosperity and health is going to come to pass in our lives… These two words literally mean “according to”, or better yet “in proportion to.” So, what the Holy Spirit was saying was that our prosperity and our health is “in proportion” to our soul prospering. In other words, our prosperity outwardly is in proportion to our prosperity inwardly! This is the truth God wants His children walking in, saints! And it’s the truth that He rejoices in—when His kids are prospering on all fronts, when they are healthy, and when they are growing up spiritually. He gets no joy out of us walking in injustice & unrighteousness – meaning, He never takes pleasure when we are not experiencing Third John 2. No, in His love, God wishes His best on us, and He rejoices when His best is experienced. Amen. IMITATORS OF LOVE
PART 11 – THINK NO EVIL REVIEW So this week, I want to pick back up on our current study entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are learning about God’s loving nature. We have based this on the apostle Paul’s instructions of imitating God as dear children from Ephesians 5:1, where we see the high calling of every believer—to be like God. But what we are doing is looking at verses that teach us how we ought to be loving one another with the understanding that these instructions/commandments must be the same way that God loves us. So, several weeks ago, we started looking at what I consider to be the best section of Scriptures that teaches us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. And we started doing this with the understanding that since God is love, all of these things the apostle Paul teaches us that love does, describe to us God’s loving characteristics. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So we have been going through this list of the characteristics of love each week and what we have learned so far is …
LOVE THINKS NO EVIL Now, let’s move on to the next thing we see the apostle Paul address about love. At the end of verse 5, He says that love “thinks no evil.” Now a good question would be – how is this even possible? How is one able to “think NO evil”? For example, we read in the Bible more than once that Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for their “evil” ways, describing them with words like “liars, hypocrites,” and even “children of the devil." Well, that sounds like Jesus was certainly “thinking” some “evil” of these guys, right? So how do we reconcile examples like this with the law of love that says we are not to even think evil of others much less call them out on their evil? Yes, how can we as Christians keep from thinking evil of others, especially when it is the Bible itself that talks about how evil exists in mankind? That seems contradictory. On top of that, I don’t think it is the Lord’s intention that we go around pretending that evil doesn't exist either. No, this is where it is important that we understand how to look up the words the writer used in the original language, and also how to utilize other translations. In doing so, we can come to understand what was truly being conveyed here instead of letting whatever terminology our Bible uses determine our interpretation of it. But before I get into what this phrase literally means, let’s consider a couple of things about the New King James Version’s translation of it: You see, the fact that we are told that there is a certain way that love “thinks” is important—because, of course, dealing with our thought life and what is going on in our heart is something that is vital for our love walk. So we’ve all heard of that old proverb principle in the world that says – “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.” Well, the Bible speaks of another element to this – “Think No Evil.” The reason being is because, as you are about to see, if love thinks no evil, then it’s going to be extremely difficult if not impossible for it to see, hear, or speak evil. The Bible teaches us in Proverbs 23:7 that as a man thinks in his heart so is he. So, if I’m thinking evil in my heart, then the Bible says that is what I will be. Plus, as the Lord Jesus taught us in His Sermon on the Mount, God views the things we allow in our hearts as being as bad as the actual transgression itself. Therefore, what is important is not just our outward behavior; it’s also what we are “thinking” in our heart. So “thinking” “evil” of others is certainly not something that love will do, because true love is genuine and not just interested in behaving in a loving way while having a heart full of evil thoughts. Amen? Now if you know me, you know that one thing that I wholeheartedly ascribe to is dealing with our thought life. Statements like – “Where the mind goes the man will follow” and “The Battle is in the Mind” have been phrases I’ve uttered many times, and the reason is because I believe that this is what the Bible clearly teaches. Yes, I believe if we can control our thought life and only think on things that God says we are to think on, there is no devil in hell that can defeat us. Amen? So when it comes to this statement that love thinks no evil, it makes sense because, if I can, first of all, control what I’m thinking in my mind, then I can control what gets into my heart. And if I can control what I’m thinking in my heart, then I can control my behavior. Did you know that you cannot be tempted by what you don’t first think on? In Hebrews 11:15 we are taught this when we are told— “And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.” What this verse is saying is that if one does call to mind something, then that’s when they have opportunity to go there. So what if they never thought about it? Well, by this verse, we understand that they won’t have the opportunity to do so. Thus, we have the truth that we cannot be tempted by what we don’t call to mind or think on. Amen. So, if my mind is how I am tempted to do evil, then my mind must also be how I choose to love. Let’s look at a verse where we see this played out. It’s found in Mark 12:30 where Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment of them all was, and of course we know His response. He said, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” So Jesus said that what God wants from us is our love, but He was more specific than that. He wanted us to love Him with all of four things: 1.Heart: 2.Soul: 3.Mind: 4.Strength: But I think it’s interesting how Jesus equated “the mind” with everything else He mentioned. The mind is very important to God because He knows that it’s the battleground. So my point is that if God wants us to love Him with all of our mind, then I’d say that one of the ways we do that is by loving others with all my mind. In other words, when I love others through thinking loving thoughts of them, then that’s a way I can fulfill this, the Greatest Commandment, for whatever I do to the least of these, I’ve done it unto Him. Amen? KNOWING GOD’S THOUGHTS So I obviously believe that dealing with our thought life is imperative, but do you know what I think we don’t talk enough about? It’s God’s thought life. What does He think on? What is His mind full of? I believe these are also important questions to answer. And why? It’s because if we come to understand how God thinks and what His mind is full of then we will know how we too ought to be thinking. Now there is a large contingent of Christians out there who think this is impossible. Yes, they think we cannot know what God is thinking because, after all, His thoughts are above our thoughts, right? Well, let’s look at the verse where this line of thinking comes from because I believe we can learn a little something about what the Lord was saying there … Sure, the Lord did say in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” But what we need to understand is that the Lord was not saying that to His people because He didn’t want them to know His ways and thoughts. He had just said to let the wicked man forsake His ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts (See verse 7), so when He goes on to say in the next couple of verses what He did, it’s clear that the ones whose God’s thoughts are higher than are those who were choosing wickedness & unrighteousness. Therefore, it’s not necessarily true to say that God’s thoughts and ways are too high for everyone. No, for us who choose His ways and thoughts above our own, there is access to them. We know this because of what Isaiah went on to say immediately following this— He then said, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11) Notice how the Lord immediately describes how the natural things of rain & snow (that come from higher up in the heavens) come down to water the earth and give us the things we need. This, to me, illustrates how His higher thoughts & higher ways are not meant to be kept in the heavens above us. No, they are intended to be poured out on us for our benefit; not kept from us because we are beneath them. Amen? And I just love how verse 11 goes on to describe how the Lord has chosen to pour out His ways & thoughts on mankind – It’s through His Word. This encompasses everything from His written Word to His prophetic Word. But the main point we need to see here is that God’s thoughts & ways are not things we cannot know. No! God desires to pour out His mind on us, and He has done this through His Word. God’s thoughts are contained & can be known through His Word! Amen! So we CAN know what God is thinking. Yes, we can come to understand His mind. In fact, the apostle Paul, when quoting from Isaiah, said, “Who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But then he went on to say, “But we have the mind of Christ.” (See First Corinthians 2:16). He had just said earlier in this chapter that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (See First Corinthians 2:9). But then in verse 10, he says, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.” So church, under this new and better covenant, we can certainly know the mind of the Lord through His Spirit. The Holy Spirit living within us is the key to comprehending God’s thoughts—for He is the mind of Christ that we have. WHAT GOD THINKS ON So how does the Holy Spirit show us God’s thoughts? What does His Word reveal to us about what God is thinking on? Well, when I consider this truth that God thinks on us, I’m immediately drawn to one of our most loved verses, Jeremiah 29:11. In this beloved verse of so many, we have God’s heart concerning the plans He has for us. It says, “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” First of all, I want you to notice that God is actually thinking about you and I … Did you know this – that the Lord actually thinks about us? Glory to God! We tend to spend more time talking about our own thought life and how we are to keep our minds set on Him, but did you know that God practices what He preaches? For example, He told us to set our minds on things above, right? (See Colossians 3:2) Well, He also does this, but He sets His mind on things below! Praise the Lord! Psalm 139:17-18 says, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand …” Wow! Now that is a lot of thoughts! And when David wrote this, he was referring to just the thoughts that God thinks of him personally! Glory to Jesus! And did you know that since God is no respecter of persons, His thoughts are just that precious and innumerable about you too? Now most Christians do not have a problem believing that God is constantly considering them; what they do have a hard time believing, however, is that those thoughts are good and positive thoughts. But again, what does Jeremiah 29:11 say that He thinks about us? “For I know the thoughts I think toward you… thoughts of good and not of evil, of peace, to give you a future and a hope.” My brothers and sisters, God is not thinking evil about you! He is focusing on the good in you! And why? Because He loves you a whole lot more than you can possibly imagine! You see, this fact that we are constantly on His mind reemphasizes to us a very important truth, and that is that He loves us … The Lord makes it clear in this oft quoted verse that the thoughts He is thinking towards us are good thoughts, not evil. They are thoughts of peace. In other words, He is not angry and focusing on all the bad things we do. If He were, He would be violating the very instructions He gave us in Philippians 4:8 when He, through the apostle Paul, told us to only think on positive things. No, saints, God is thinking only good of you. He is a wonderful Heavenly Father that treasures you in His heart and only desires the best for you. Let that truth penetrate your heart today. You know, when we fall in love, one characteristic of that love is our minds become filled with that other person. We think about them all the time when we are at the height of that love. And why are we thinking so much of that person? It is because they are in our heart! Saints, God actually holds us in His heart! He does not just tolerate us or make Himself “have to” think good things about us. No, He thinks good thoughts about us because we hold a special place in His heart! In other words, we are important to Him because you do not rent space in your heart to people or things that are not important to you. No, what is in your heart is what is valuable to you! Therefore, we must be extremely valuable to the Lord if His heart and mind are so inclined towards us! Amen! LOVE KEEPS NO ACCOUNT OF WRONGS But back to this phrase “(love) thinks no evil.” While it’s obvious that the Lord does not think evil of us, as I said earlier, this phrase is a little misleading. Certainly the idea of the mind plays a part in this, but actually this word “thinks” is a poor translation. It comes from the Greek word logizomai which means to credit, count, or consider. It was an accounting term that could be translated “to calculate.” So this phrase would be better translated “(love) does not keep a record or account of evil & wrongs” and this is actually how most translations translate this phrase. So this is a very helpful piece of information for our love walk: You see, if I ever say or think something to the effect of – “You do this all the time!” or “This is the 3rd time you did that” – then I am not in love because why? Love isn’t counting. No, it’s not adding up and recounting all the times someone has done something. But, as we learn from this that I am walking in love if I am not keeping count of others’ faults, this is also how God is towards us! He doesn’t keep a record of our faults! He doesn’t recall our mistakes! In fact, He is not even considering how many times you and I have missed it. We have a lot of other Scriptures that substantiate this about God. Allow me to remind you of some of them. In fact, let me remind you of these verses by showing you how you and I should be reminding the enemy of these truths when he comes against our minds with his lies. So the next time the enemy comes to you, trying to get you to “count & consider” your sins, do this. Say, “Mr. devil, since you are trying to get me to consider all of the bad things I have done, I want to take you to ‘accounting’ class and have you ‘add up’ the following:
Is that enough? So it is written in the mouth of multiple witnesses that I am one of the blessed whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered—of which the Lord will remember no more. He chooses not to remember my sins and blots out my transgressions for His name’s sake.” Church, this is what God thinks of you and I. His thoughts for us that outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore are good thoughts, not evil ones. This is how love thinks, counting the good, true, and lovely things of the ones it loves. God thinks no evil; only good. IMITATORS OF LOVE
PART 10 – WHY SO SENSITIVE? REVIEW Our current study is one that I’ve entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are learning about the true nature of God. We have based this on the apostle Paul’s instructions of imitating God as dear children (See Ephesians 5:1), where we see the high calling of every believer—to be like God. Now someone will invariably say, “Aw, that’s impossible! We cannot be like God!” Well, I’d remind this naysayer that they better inform God of that—because He has said in various places in the Bible things like be holy as He is holy, to be perfect even as He is perfect, and to be merciful as He is merciful. So there we have three witnesses that should establish this truth to us that our high calling is to be like God. Amen? So the way we are doing this is by looking at verses that teach us how we ought to be treating one another. However, the way this works is that we understand how God will not give us a standard of loving one another that He isn’t willing to abide by Himself. Therefore, we can look at all of these verses that teach us how to love and know this is how God is with each of us. So, a few weeks ago, we started looking at a great section of Scriptures that teaches us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. And we started doing this with the understanding that since God is love, all of these things the apostle Paul teaches us that love does, describe to us God’s characteristics. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So we have been going through this list of the characteristics of love each week and what we have learned so far is …
LOVE IS NOT PROVOKED Now the next thing that Paul says that love is not in First Corinthians 13:5 is “(love) is not provoked.” So in my practice of looking at various translations, I see a common theme with this term “provoked.” A lot of translations describe this as love not being “easily angered” or “irritable.” A couple of other translations say that it is not “quick-tempered” or “easily annoyed.” Do you know anyone like that? Is there someone you are friends with, related to, work with, or are married to that is like this? Of course, I ask this because the Lord would certainly lead Pastor Trey to talk to us about this to a group of people who are simply associated with others who struggle with this 😉. Of course, I jest. The Lord wouldn’t lead us to talk about this for those who aren’t here. No, He will lead HPC into this because our church will have people who struggle with this very thing. Amen? But the fact is, everyone struggles with this—some more than others. So not only will we in these pews have our own problems with this, but we will run with others who struggle with it as well. Yes, every person has the capacity to be easily irritated or annoyed, quick-tempered. But this point ought to be clear to us—Simply put, Paul was saying that love isn’t this way. No, love is not easily annoyed or angered. It’s not going to be quick-tempered or irritable because that is not what love does. Do you know why this is true? It’s because everything from being annoyed, irritated, and quick tempered are all self-centered. The reason being is because all of these feelings in me are associated with how the other person is making me feel. So how can it be love for others if I am focused on how what someone else is doing is making me feel? That would fall more under the arena of love for myself than love for others, right? I mean, just listen to our terminology when we are feeling this way— “They annoy me ... I am so irritated ... I’m so angry right now …” Oftentimes, you can find this ugly self-centeredness simply in our usage of these personal pronouns. Yes, if there are a lot of I’s, me’s, my’s, etc. in my conversations, then there might just be too much of “me” in those conversations. But, yes, my point is that love isn’t going to be irritable, easily annoyed, or “provokable.” Why? Because love is not focused on itself and how what the other person is doing is making them feel. Love does the exact opposite. It’s not worried as much about how it feels as it is about the other person. In other words, love will be more sensitive to the other person than it is to its own feelings. WHY SO SENSITIVE? Along those lines, I like something that the Amplified Bible brings out about this phrase in First Corinthians 13:5— It says, “love is not provoked [nor overly sensitive or easily angered]” This being overly sensitive seems to be a little more of the issue, doesn’t it? For it is the root of one being easily angered, annoyed, quick-tempered, and irritable, right? Yes, even though we all can struggle with this, some are definitely a little more sensitive than others and can tend to get a little more easily irritated than others. So if this is me, some good questions would be— Why am I so sensitive? Why do I fly off the rails so easily when people do or say certain things? What is it in me that causes me to get irritated with things that the average person might not be annoyed by? Well, again, the first thing we need to understand is that the simple answer to these questions based on the verse we are covering is— It’s because we are not walking in love in those times. I say this because Paul clearly said here that love is not provoked. So what this means is that in the times I am getting annoyed, irritated, or angered by what someone else is doing / saying, it’s because I am only thinking about myself and not thinking about them. In other words, I am being consumed with how what they are doing / saying is making me feel instead of what might be going on with that other person. So the real culprit here is love of ourselves and not love for the other person. Amen or Oh me? But the good news in this is that love is something that we can all choose over self at any given moment. For example, I can be a person who totally struggles with being easily “provoked” and is completely self-centered on multiple levels, but then walk by a house one day that’s on fire and hear a child screaming for help from inside, and then throw all thoughts of myself out the window (no pun intended) and put myself in harm’s way to run into that house to rescue that child. Guess what I just did? I chose love over self. So making the right decisions that are based on love is not rocket science. You don’t always have to get fixed to do the right thing. I can choose a life of love because God said I can. However, there are certainly reasons why some of us seemingly are more sensitive than others. And that’s what I would like to deal with today—Why so sensitive? So why? Why are some of us a little more sensitive in these areas? I have come to discover that just as our physical bodies can be bruised, our souls can carry bruises as well. And don’t we know just how sensitive those physical bruises can be? For instance, if you had a big bruise on your arm from some accident and I came up to you today and squeezed you in that place, you’d feel it, wouldn’t you? And you also might have some kind of reaction like pushing me away, slapping my hand, or getting angry with me. Well, that’s what happens all the time with so many of us. No, I’m not talking physically; I’m referring to the soul. Some of our souls are covered in bruises from where someone else hurt us or from where a circumstance/situation wounded us. And this is exactly why some of us are more sensitive to certain things others do or say. Now our flesh would like to tell us— “Oh no, it’s them, Pastor. It’s what they are doing/saying that’s the problem.” No, it’s not. And I’ll prove it to you: Does everything anyone does or says “provoke” the same response from others? No, it doesn’t. For example, if a person treats you and I in a certain way, it might totally be no big deal to you and absolutely offend me. So the point is that the same action can generate two different responses—proving that it’s not just what the other person does/says; it’s how we view their action, what our expectations on people are, what we are sensitive to, etc. That’s ultimately what determines our emotional response. You know, a great example of this is how a baby or little children act. An example would be if we had a youngster start crying during one of our services. That baby’s cry might irritate the snot out of some of you, getting you thinking— “I wish the parents would just shut them up!” But to others, they might be thinking— “Aww, what a sweet baby. He’s probably hungry.” So the same baby’s cry might generate completely opposite reactions—one being an irritated attitude and the other being a compassionate attitude. And why? Because of the way we are thinking and where our focus is. HEALING THE BRUISES So let me quickly give you a couple of ways that I have learned of how to let those bruises heal: Well, my first key goes along the lines of how we let bruises heal in the natural— If I am one of those accident prone people who seems to compile injuries, then I might keep reaggravating that bruise, right? In other words, a person who tends towards having the same accidents over and over might continue to reinjure themselves because they keep putting themselves in the position to get hurt. We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Some people seem to just be drawn to getting into relationships with people who aren’t good for them. So they keep putting themselves in the position to continue getting hurt. I think sometimes we need to realize that we might be drawn to the wrong people because of certain heart issues, and this is compiling the problem. The key is just being honest with ourselves and simply looking at our history. Amen? Also, if I’m one of those that keeps touching the bruise, pushing on it and poking it myself, it’s going to have a harder time healing, isn’t it? So this might describe the person who likes to pet their bruise—meaning, it’s their identity and they talk about it constantly. Friends, while there is certainly a place for talking about the problem that obviously exists in working through it, this can also be something we give too much attention to, which can work against us instead of helping the issue. I’m reminded of the story in Nehemiah where, in the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, the people heard the words of the Law. This saddened the people, and they began to mourn and weep—to which Nehemiah responded to the people that this was not the time to mourn over their past failures and what had gotten them to this position of even having to rebuild these walls. So what all of this means is that, while the Israelites were naturally tempted to look at their past and all of the things that went wrong, this was not the time & place to focus on that. So Nehemiah told them in Nehemiah 8:10 – “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the lesson in this story is that while there is a day where we might need to address the failures & hurts of the past, that’s not every day. There are days that are holy to the Lord and on those, we need rejoice in what God is doing in us today. I’ve had the Lord specifically minister this to me during a time where my natural tendency to look at the negative needed some correction: I used to be consumed with my failures & shortcomings. So one time, as I was asking the Lord when He was going to help me get free of my current issues, He reminded me of how far He had brought me in such a short period of time. This was a perspective change for me. I had never considered that it actually might be a healthy thing for me to relax and rejoice in how far I had come. To me, that was irresponsible. But the Lord knew I needed to chill out and not continue to be hyper-focused on the negative. Church, I believe in order for some of us to grow past the place we are at, we need to change the channel and learn how to rejoice in some things. For example, it might be that you or I need to focus on the growth that has taken place in someone in our life instead of continuing to focus on what’s left to change in them. Hey, that might actually help the relationship. So we just need to simply use some wisdom of what our tendencies are to enter wrong relationships and choose more wisely and/or let the Lord show us how to direct our attention to more constructive things. These are just a couple of wise things that one can do to receive the healing the Lord has for us. GOD IS NOT TOUCHY But one thing that I believe is tremendously helpful to do that always works in seeing ourselves healed from the soul bruises of the past is to do exactly what you have heard over and over in this series – We need to see God! We need to understand how He is exactly what we desire to be. Yes, if I want to forgive better, I need to see the Lord’s forgiveness. If I want to be more merciful, I need to behold His mercy. And in this case, if I want to not be so easily provoked and become less sensitive, I need to capture in my heart how He is not easily provoked. So now for how our God is like this: One amazing thing about God is that He is not easily provoked. No, He is not easily irritable or quick-tempered. Now let me say, first of all, that this does not mean that God does not have limits. The Scriptures do teach us how God’s people have “provoked” Him to anger. And while I certainly believe that the Cross has made a big difference in how God responds to His people’s shortcomings & failures, the fact is, love does have limits and just because it is extremely longsuffering & patient doesn’t mean that one can never reach that last straw. This needs to be said because there are many in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ today who have done exactly what the apostle Paul warned us about where he said to not despise the riches of His goodness, longsuffering, and forbearance by not letting His grace turn us towards repentance. An utter lack of repentance is a dangerous place to be, church. So we don’t want to tread on that ground. But for those of us who do desire to change and imitate God in all that we do, think, or say, there is certainly more than enough love & grace to make it downright difficult to provoke God the way that many of His chosen people have over time. God’s heart has and always will be one that is not easily angered, irritated, or annoyed. Many believe otherwise, however. I’ve run into many Christians who always seem to think that they are irritating God. They will bring up their constant shortcomings and how they fall short of His glory and seem to believe that God is simply exasperated with them. Nothing could be farther than the truth! Again, many think this for a couple of reasons: One is that they mistakenly put God in the same category with us. Meaning, because we have such short fuses and tend towards getting irritated with other people so easily, God must be the same. And I’m here to tell you today that He is not like you and I. Thank God! The fact is, we are carnal most of the time, and in our selfishness, we do not have much patience with other’s faults. But God is not selfish; He is spiritual. And as a spiritual being who is the embodiment of the fruit of the Spirit, He is most certainly nowhere close to our short-tempered, impatient, and easily-angered nature. The other reason why a large contingent of Christians see God as being easily provoked is because they have a perverted view of Him. Meaning, they have become so hyper-focused on Old Testament examples of God becoming exasperated with the children of Israel and how He demonstrated His anger time and time again, that this is who they see God is. But what these have failed to do is consider how Jesus came to show us the heart of God—how He is truly the only way to see the true nature of God. So having only that Old Testament view of God engrained in them, they have never come to consider the kindness side of God in addition to the severe side. But there is a good & loving side of God that truly represents His nature. In other words, God will be who He needs to be. But love & goodness is who He desires to be. Never forget that. So when it comes to this truth that love is not provoked, we need to realize that God’s core nature is to not be easily angered. But this goes beyond the judgment of sin. Some Christians have a hard time with the simplest of things. For example, they feel they are bothering God or that they can anger Him by asking for certain things or by asking for too many things at once. But again, this is according to our own experiences, and we are basing this on how we would be. Again, God is not like us- thank God! He is not easily irritated or angered. He is far more patient and kind than we could possibly imagine! No, He doesn’t carry a chip on His shoulder or get irritated easily. We do not have to worry about God waking up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. He is not touchy, grumpy, or even in a bad mood. He loves to hear from you! He is honored that we turn to Him with our every need! This is who our God is. LIBERALLY AND WITHOUT REPROACH A good example of this is found in James 1:5: This verse describes how if any person lacks wisdom, he or she needs to simply ask God for that wisdom—because He is always willing to give that wisdom “liberally and without reproach.” Now the context concerns the various trials we find ourselves in. And sometimes those trials provide a lot of questions such as “Why did this happen to me?” or “How do I get out of this?” No matter the question, we always need wisdom from God when we fall into these various trials. So what are we to do? Ask of God! While the Greek word used for “ask” here does simply describe a petition; it also denotes to “desire, crave and to beg.” So, the kind of asking that is being described here is a wholehearted kind of petition, not just some passing, flippant request that is half-hearted. This is important. But notice that James said that we are to ask of God. The word that is used for “of” here is the Greek word para and means “to come alongside of.” So, this describes the proximity of our request from God, which is right by His side. Therefore, it denotes that we have drawn near to God and ask. This has so many shades of meaning, all of which are vitally important to understand: The truth is many are asking amiss. They are doing things independent from God (i.e. doing their own thing) and they have not come alongside of Him. This is the best way to receive from God, church - learning to draw near to Him and walk with Him on a regular basis. Entering into His presence through worship to where He is near, and you have His ear! This is coming boldly to Him in the full assurance of faith! And James goes on to explain to his readers why that is - to be completely persuaded that when they ask, they will receive: It is because our God “gives liberally and without reproach.” But what if the God that we come to is not the God who gives liberally and without reproach? In other words, what if we are making this request of a God that we are not convinced will give (number one) to all (number two) liberally and (number three) without reproach? Then the last part of James 1:5 might not happen for you (i.e. “it will be given to you”). In other words, our lack of understanding of who He is might impede us from receiving from Him. You see, when we come to God, our view of Him does impact how we receive from Him. If we see Him as a harsh, critical and condemning Judge, it will be impossible for us to approach Him in the full assurance of faith because we won’t be sure of what He will do or say. But if we see Him as a good, liberal, and non-condemning God, there will be confidence that when we ask, we will receive. The word James used for “liberally” here is only used this one time, and it literally describes something being done “simply, openly, frankly, sincerely.” One expositor stated that “singleness of mind is the central feature” of this word. So what we can see by the usage of this word is how God will “simply” give us the wisdom we ask Him for. He’s very “open” to giving us the answers we need. So “frankly” speaking, God will very freely give you what you are asking Him for. Now the phrase “without reproach” gives us even more insight into how the Lord responds to the requests we give Him. To “reproach” someone means to “revile, defame, or chide” them. So what this means is that, when we ask the Lord for something like wisdom, He is not going to respond to us by criticizing, mocking, and slandering us. In other words, what this describes is how some of us might respond when someone asks us something that “provokes” us. For instance, if someone asks us something for the 10th time, we might start getting irritated with them at that point, so we show that agitation by responding with something like— “How many times are you going to ask me that? C’mon man! Are you stupid or something?” So, even though you might end up giving them the answer again, those “reviling” words are a great example of responding “with reproach.” So the point is this is not what God is going to do with any of us even though we ask Him for something over and over. No, He will simply give us what we ask for and never add any condescending response with it. And why? Because He, being love, is not easily provoked. He will not get irritated or agitated with us. His attitude will always be that of compassion, mercy, and grace. Church, this is what heals those bruises—knowing that in His love, God has bruised His beloved Son (See Isaiah 53:10). Have you ever read that and wondered how God the Father could do that to Jesus? Moreover, how could it actually “please” Him to put Jesus on the Cross? The answer is simple: We saw that He did not get pleasure in causing to Him suffer; what pleased Him was how it would cause all of us to be redeemed, forgiven and made righteous once again! His pleasure was in us—and both He and Jesus were willing and happy to do what They had to do for you. So Jesus was bruised for us! In other words, He made Himself the substitute for our bruises and was bruised that we might be healed. This is grace! This is the power of the Gospel! REVIEW
So we are studying about the true nature of God based on one simple question—Would God give us a standard that He Himself is not first practicing Himself? In other words, would God tell us to treat our neighbors a certain way if He was not treating us the same? And the obvious answer to that is—No, of course He will not and does not. Therefore, a great way that I have found to learn about God’s loving nature is to look at how He commands us to love each other. Now I have entitled this series of messages “Imitators of Love” because as we are told to imitate God as dear children, we can look at all of these other things God tells us to do as simply copying what He does. So, a couple of weeks ago, we started looking at a great section of Scriptures that teaches us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. We are doing this with the understanding that since God is love, all of these things the apostle Paul teaches us that love does, describe to us God’s characteristics. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So we have been going through this list of the characteristics of love each week and what we have learned so far is …
LOVE DOESN’T BOAST OF ITSELF Today, I want us to look at these next two things that the apostle Paul said that love is not. The second half of First Corinthians 13:4 says, “love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.” Now this is certainly true of our God, isn’t it? He does everything but “parade Himself” before His creation, nor is He “puffed up.” In fact, He is the exact opposite. He purposefully does not put Himself on display when by all accounts, if anyone was worthy of doing so, it would be Him. But no, God has not made it a practice of His to reveal His glory to the world. In fact, very few have ever gotten a glimpse of just how beautiful He is. But oh, how the majority of His creation have done the exact opposite. Yes, most people live their entire lives “parading” themselves—that is, promoting themselves and proudly displaying all their talents, knowledge, beauty, etc. for others to see. Now the phrase “parade itself” comes from the Greek word that means to brag or boast of oneself, and Paul was saying here that this is not love. No, love for others doesn’t brag about itself. Sure, love for itself will brag about itself, but the truth we need to understand today is that we will brag about whoever we love. I mean, it’s not hard to see this, is it? We’ve all seen mothers brag on their sons, fathers boast of their daughters, grandparents glory in their grandkids, etc. And why is this? It’s because they love their kids & grandkids. Yes, they have a special place in their hearts, so they brag, boast, and glory in their accomplishments and so forth. But again, if we love ourselves, guess who we will brag on and boast about? Ourselves! And we’ve all seen that as well, haven’t we? You see, one of the core characteristics of pride—which is anti-love—is how it loves to talk about itself. It loves to brag about what it’s seen, who & what it knows, where it’s been and what it’s done, etc. It’s not hard to spot it in a conversation either. And we’ve all got a little bit of it in us—some more than others 😊. Now the reason why pride so easily manifests in our words is because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So if our heart is full of ourselves, what do you think the main topic of conversation will be? Ourselves! Yes, there will be a lot of personal pronouns in those conversations—a lot of “I’s, me’s, my’s, etc.” However, if our hearts are full of others, we will brag about them. Yes, we will celebrate and “parade” them from our hearts when love is in our hearts towards them. So this is what love does. It doesn’t “parade” itself. It honors others. Yes, love seeks to celebrate others and not itself. LOVE ISN’T FULL OF ITSELF Now the next description of what love is, is very similar to love not “parading itself.” Paul says that love also is not “puffed up.” This phrase literally describes being “inflated, blown up, or caused to swell up.” Of course, Paul is talking about being full of pride here. But let’s consider the terminology for a moment—if pride is being “inflated or blown up,” what do you suppose this person is inflated with? Themselves! Yes, they are full of themselves (as we like to say it). Now there is nothing much more repulsive than a person who is full of themselves, is there? Of course, it will make a person completely selfish & self-centered, but it does more than just that. It will cause a person to be wise in their own opinion, to think they know more than everyone else, to trust in their own abilities, to take matters into their own hands, etc. I could go on and on. But what I want you to understand today is that someone who is “puffed up” is not just arrogant and haughty; they can also be self-sufficient and self-reliant. The bottom line is that this pride can take on many faces and it’s not just the traditional view of pride that’s glaringly obvious. In fact, I could have a lot of pride and appear to others like I’m very humble. How? By not necessarily bragging on myself or coming across as being better than others, but by being a person who doesn’t like to lose control. In fact, out of the seven times that this word is used in the New Testament, six of them are found in this epistle (i.e., First Corinthians). Therefore, the church of Corinth was a body of believers that apparently had a pretty big problem with this ugly stuff called pride. In one of these verses, Paul tells us that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (See First Corinthians 8:1), and what he was saying here was how knowing facts and even the truth can actually have the tendency to inflate those who know such things with pride. But what is the lesson here? It is that while knowledge tends to puff up, love builds up. In other words, if you and I are walking in love, we will seek to edify others and not tear them down because we know something they don’t. So as Paul was saying here in First Corinthians 13:4, if I am puffed up, I won’t be building others up in love. So again, while love is not puffed up, love does build up. The terminology “edifies” or “builds up” describes a house or building that is being “built up”—thus the restoration of a building, the rebuilding or repair of a home, etc. This is what love does with others! When it sees a person who is broken or even demolished, love seeks to build them back up, restoring and rebuilding their lives. Now pride is not generally going to be so concerned with helping build someone else’s house, is it? But it most certainly will exert all kinds of care and concern with building its own, right? And I am not just talking about the building of houses. I’m speaking metaphorically about building our own kingdoms, things that directly affect us. So this could be our own families, businesses, ministries, etc. Church, it’s easy for us to have our affections set on our own stuff to where that’s what we seek, what we think about, what’s on our heart, etc. But the love God has called us to walk in will set its affections on other’s kingdoms and seek first their welfare even above our own at times. Yes, love will have its heart full of others, which will result in it treasuring the things which concern them and boasting in their victories and successes. I mean, it’s what the Lord has done for us, right? THE HUMBLE GOD You see, our main point today is that God is certainly the definition of humility—not parading Himself and bragging on Himself, and also not being full of Himself. And again, if anyone ever had a right to do this, it would be Him. But because of His great love for us, He has chosen to parade us, to brag on us, and have His heart full of us. That’s what love does, saints! I know some of us might have a hard time accepting the fact that God is the epitome of humility, being the exalted, great God that He is, but even in His sovereignty, He possesses the utmost humility. Now there is no better way to see the humble side of God than in the Lord Jesus. As we know, He only did what He saw the Father doing and only said what He heard from His Father. Therefore, Jesus was the image of the invisible God and the express image of His person. So whatever we see in Him is who our God is. Well, the Scriptures reveal to us how the life & ministry of Jesus was all about humility. No, He never paraded Himself—bragging about who He was. He wasn’t puffed up in pride being full of Himself. No, as Jesus said in Matthew 11:29— “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart …” So even though Jesus was God, He came in a “gentle and lowly in heart” manner. This is what He wanted us to learn about Him. So let’s talk a little bit about this humble side of God which is motivated by selfless love. THE MIND OF CHRIST Yes, we are told in Ephesians 5:2 that Jesus not only served & ministered, but that He actually gave Himself! Let’s look at it … After the apostle Paul gives the exhortation to be imitators of God as dear children, he went on to say that we can do this by “walk(ing) in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” So what Paul is saying here is the way in which we imitate our Heavenly Father is by walking in love with one another the way Christ has loved us. And how He did this was by giving Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God! Amen! So let’s talk a little bit today about how Christ did this: What was the process by which He “gave Himself” for us? Now I believe this action of love is actually perfectly described to us in Philippians chapter 2. So let’s go over to Philippians the 2nd chapter and look at how Paul describes the mentality and attitude of Jesus Christ … Paul begins in Philippians 2:3 to give some instructions to this church. He says, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” Now obviously we are talking here about pride—for “selfish ambition and conceit” are descriptors of this enemy of love. Regarding being conceited, this basically means “having an excessively high opinion of oneself” (Webster’s). In Romans 12:3 we are told not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. God wants us to think highly of ourselves. He wants us to realize that we are valuable to him and that we have an important purpose. He just doesn’t want us to think more highly of ourselves than we should. That is, thinking that our gifts and talents are of ourselves. God doesn’t mind us acknowledging our gifts. He just wants us to acknowledge the Giver of those gifts too. Then Paul goes on to say things that are opposed to doing things through selfish ambition and conceit— “but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” You see, lowliness of mind is the opposite of being “high-minded.” It describes having a low estimation of one’s own worth and value. Not in the sense of who we are in Christ but in a sense of who we are in ourselves. One of the definitions of pride is to be enveloped in smoke. This means that a prideful person cannot see reality. They are blinded by the smoke of self-deception. If we fly too high, then we can get our heads caught in the clouds and blind ourselves. I love how the Amplified Bible describes this phrase “lowliness of mind.” It describes it as “in the true spirit of humility.” So it is “in lowliness of mind” that we are able to esteem others better than ourselves. We have to see ourselves as not being the most important person in the world before we will be able to truly esteem others better than ourselves. To “esteem” someone means to honor them. In Romans 12:10 we see this definition of honor… It says, “in honor giving preference to one another.” When you allow someone “to lead the way” (def. “preference”) you are honoring them. Ways we can honor others is to:
These are just some of the ways that we can esteem others better than ourselves. And living a lifestyle of honoring others like this will result in God honoring us because “the last shall be first!” Now I want us to skip down to verse 5: Philippians 2:5 says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Now Paul had just told us in verses 2-4 to walk in one accord with our brothers and sisters and to esteem other’s interests above our own. Now he gives us the perfect example of someone who fulfilled this to the uttermost—Christ Jesus! Jesus strived to live in unity with God’s people - not at the cost of the truth but with the effort to reveal the truth to them. Jesus had no selfish ambition nor was He conceited. He truly esteemed others better than Himself. Jesus looked out for the interests of others above His own. He was the best example of humility that there ever was and ever will be! The word “mind” here comes from the Greek word phroneo which means to think, to be mindful of, to have regard for, or to have a certain attitude. So Paul is telling us here to have the same attitude as Jesus. He wants us to think like He thought—to have His perspective on things. Saints, this mindset that Jesus had has to be “in” us. It has to be an attitude that has become a part of us—that is, placed in our heart. It is only when this kind of thinking becomes a part of us that it will truly change the way we live. “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7) Our actions are a product of the way we think. Where the mind goes the man will follow! So what was Jesus’ mindset, attitude and way of thinking? We need to find this out because this is how we are exhorted to think as well! Beginning in verse 6, the apostle Paul goes on to tell us the mentality of Christ. He says, “who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God…” Now the word “form” describes the “nature or essence” of something or someone. This means that before Jesus came to the earth He had the complete nature of God—for He was, in essence, God Himself as a member of the Trinity. Now regarding the phrase “robbery to be equal with God,” the word “robbery” is a poor translation because it gives off the wrong impression of what Paul was trying to say. With this incorrect translation it would seem to mean Paul was saying that Jesus did not consider it “stealing” to say He was equal with God. But the whole context of what Paul was teaching was humility and laying down our own rights for others. Paul was teaching us that we are to lay down our privileges as children of God for the benefit of others. The word “robbery” comes from the Greek word harpagmos, which describes “a prize held onto tightly, a treasure to be retained at all costs, or something valuable that is too good to let go.” This is the “mind of Christ” mentioned in the previous verse, friends! Jesus did not consider or regard what He had in heaven when He walked in the full nature of God something that He could not let go of. Jesus considered us more precious and worth being apprehended than His own status and nature as God Almighty! That is awesome, saints! In short, He loved and valued us more than He loved and valued His position in heaven! And this is how we are to regard other people: more valuable than our own position, fame, and glory. Sure, we are the righteousness of God in Christ. Sure, we are the King’s kids. But if we usurp those positions above serving others then we are not having the mind of Christ! You see, Christ’s attitude here was the exact opposite of that of Lucifer’s (see Isaiah 14:12-15). Lucifer had one of the most important positions in heaven. He was close to the throne of God, but he was not satisfied. He desired to be on the throne of God. He was not satisfied with being a creature. He desired to be the Creator. One of the main differences between Jesus and Lucifer was that Lucifer said, “I will” and Jesus said, “Thy will.” Lucifer thought only of his own promotion to benefit himself and Jesus thought only of His demotion to benefit us. Christ’s humility in love is a direct contrast to Satan’s pride in his selfish ambition! Then Paul goes on further to describe Christ Jesus’ mentality in verse 7 … He said, “but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.” By using the word “but”, Paul was saying that not only did Jesus not “consider” His position in heaven something that He had to retain at all costs, but He also acted on it by making Himself of no reputation. We are told in First John 3:18 that we are to make sure we do not love in word or in tongue but in deed and in truth. James chapter 2 teaches us that faith without works is dead. We need to always judge our love walk to see if it is active. Jesus considered us of more value than His own position and then actively lowered Himself for us. Likewise, we need to not only see others as more valuable than ourselves, but we also need to willingly lower ourselves through selfless acts of love. The words “made...of no reputation” come from the Greek word keno which means “to empty something.” This Greek word carries the idea in context that Jesus willingly emptied Himself of His divine privileges and glory that He had as being in the form of God. Saints, He willingly laid down all of His Godhead privileges! I do like how the word “reputation” is used here. A reputation is the general opinion of other people towards something or someone. Jesus had the greatest reputation while He was in heaven as God. All the hosts of heaven highly esteemed Him. But He chose to willingly forget about His reputation in heaven and come to the earth, where He became despised and rejected by His own creation. Jesus literally made Himself to have no reputation with man rather than having the best reputation in heaven. So many people worry about their reputation with men that they compromise what is right. In Christ Jesus we no longer have our own reputation. We died to ourselves on the day we received Him so we should no longer be concerned with what the world thinks of us. Then Paul said that He “taking the form” … The word used for “form” here is the same Greek word translated “form” in verse 6. It means “nature or essence.” So after Jesus laid down His nature and privileges as God, He took up the nature and lack of privileges of a servant. But what makes what Jesus did so powerful was that when He left behind all the glory and honor of heaven He came to the earth and took the least glorious and least honorable position attainable- a bondservant—for the word “bondservant” comes from the Greek word doulos and describes the lowest form of slave. Jesus said Himself, “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). He went from being the Highest to being the lowest! Then in verse 8, the apostle Paul went on to say, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Notice that it says that Jesus “humbled Himself”… The word “humbled” means “to make low.” This is what Jesus did by becoming a bondservant (vs.7)—He made Himself low. THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS But perhaps no greater example can be given of how Jesus did all of this other than John chapter 13. So let’s take a look at it. Of course, this is the account of Jesus washing His disciple’s feet that most of us are familiar with, but I want us to notice a couple of important points from this story … John 13:1-17 reads: “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (So we see here that the topic of Jesus’ love for His own is the subject at hand of this chapter) And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, are You washing my feet?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.’ Peter said to Him, ‘You shall never wash my feet!’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.’ Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!’ Jesus said to him, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.’ For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, ‘You are not all clean.’ So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” Now does this mean that we need to have a ceremonial foot washing service from time to time? Well, not necessarily. You see, foot washing was something that was done in those days because it was absolutely necessary. They wore sandals which exposed most of their feet and they didn’t travel on asphalt. Their feet were exposed everywhere they walked and were absolutely in need of these occasional foot washings. Now I’m sure as nasty as some of our feet are, they cannot compare to these guys! Therefore, foot washing was not an ordinance that Jesus was seeking to establish; serving one another was the true lesson that He was illustrating to us. But the point is this is a great example of how the Lord became a bondservant & humbled himself while He dwelt among us. And what was the result of this humility? Paul tells us in Philippians 2:9 – “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name …” The word “therefore” shows us that it was through Jesus humbling Himself by becoming a servant to man and obedient to the Father, God also honored Him by highly exalting Him and giving Him the name which is above every name. So it was only when Jesus decided to lower Himself through humility to the Father and man that God elevated Him and elevated His name. The major lesson we can learn from this is how God will in turn reward us for our humility, servanthood, and obedience. While we will never be rewarded the way that Jesus was with the loftiest position and title, we will be exalted to a certain degree on the Great judgment day if we truly lowered ourselves through selfless acts of humility and love while we were on the earth. So this is the way Jesus thought, and it is the way Paul said that we, too, ought to think. It’s the way love thinks, and Jesus loved us enough to not only lay down His Godhead privileges and to not only empty Himself, but to humble Himself and become the greatest servant this world has ever seen. Amen! PRIDE – THE SUPER VILLIAN But our point today is how true humility is the exact opposite of this pride that is full of itself and parades itself. In fact, I consider pride to be the biggest “anti-love” vice. In other words, our pride is the supervillain of love. Yes, church, just like the Joker is to Batman and Lex Luthor is to Superman, pride is the archrival of our inner man. And just like it seems as though those comic book villains cannot be killed, this archrival of our inner man isn’t going to die either. It must be defeated daily because it will always resurface. Pride is the biggest enemy of our 'inner me'!" But your inward man is meek, gentle, and humble. It has the nature & characteristics of Christ resident within it. Therefore, that villain called pride is simply a part of our carnal nature, which we are all born with. So it is for that reason that I don’t like to look at pride as mine. The real me—the eternal part of me that we call the spirit man—doesn’t have a lick of pride in it. Therefore, I see pride as my arch-rival and not a part of the real me. Like Paul teaches us in Galatians chapter 5:16-18, we have a war going on inside of us—the spirit versus the flesh. And while God wants us yielding to His humility and love that resides in our inner man, the enemy of our soul wants us yielding to pride and self-centeredness. It’s a continuous fight, but it’s one worth fighting for—for the rewards of humility and love cannot be understated. Let’s let these characteristics of love become our priority and receive the Lord’s help and grace in the process. Amen? REVIEW
Currently, we are studying the true nature of love in a series of messages that I am calling “Imitators of Love.” However, even though the series title might seem to indicate that we are looking at how we can imitate God, what we are doing is looking at verses that teach us how to love others, knowing that those teach us how God loves us. I’ll tell you, church—this is a fun new way to study our Bible because it causes us to take a different look at verses. In this case, understanding that God won’t give us a standard that He isn’t practicing Himself, we can learn how God treats us by looking at verses that teach us how to treat each other. Our golden text that we are basing this teaching on is Ephesians 5:1-2 where the apostle Paul instructs us to imitate God as His children. And I’ve made the point that being imitators of God would encompass everything else we could ever aspire to be in Him and for Him—because everything He tells us to do is simply meant for us to reflect the light that He is to this world. So we spent several weeks looking at the verses that preceded Ephesians chapter 5 and learned how Paul got to this point of summarizing with this exhortation to imitate God—how God will not lie to us or steal from us, how He will speak to us in a certain way, and what His attitude is towards sin versus the sinner. Then a couple of weeks ago, we started looking at another section of Scriptures that has been traditionally used to teach us how we are to love one another – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” But what we are doing is turning this around and teaching these verses from the same perspective that we have been—how because God is love, these characteristics of love teach us the very characteristics of God Himself. So I encourage you that as we go through these verses, read them as so: “God suffers long and is kind, He does not envy, God does not parade Himself, He is not puffed up; God does not behave rudely, He does not seek His own, He is not provoked, He thinks no evil; God does not rejoice in iniquity, but He rejoices in the truth; God bears all things, He believes all things, He hopes all things, He endures all things; God never fails …” We looked at Paul’s first description of love—that it “suffers long.” So, at the forefront of all of Love’s characteristics, we see that God is “longsuffering” (you might also say, “patient.”). So we looked at several Scriptures that clearly teach us how longsuffering our God is—both how He suffers long with His creation before the inevitable judgment and also how He suffered long with the likes of Peter & Paul. In fact, we looked at Paul’s own testimony of how God’s longsuffering was on full display in His life by how He both saved him and used him. Yes, God suffers long with all of us. In His love, He is totally patient with His creation. This is who He is and not just what He does. Then last week, we saw how God doesn’t just suffer long, but He’s kind while doing it. How many of you know that it’s one thing to suffer long or be patient with others, but it’s a whole other ballgame to be kind while you’re doing it? In other words, someone might appear to be longsuffering on the outside, but on the inside, they have the wrong attitude while they are waiting. But the fact is—we have a lot of Scriptures that teach us about the goodness & kindness of God. And like longsuffering, this is more than just what He does; God is kind! We learned how these virtues like longsuffering & kindness are fruit of the Spirit—meaning, they are the fruit of who He is and what He Himself does! Amen! In other words, God has called His children to produce His very own fruit—that is, His will is for us to be just like Him! Yes, love is the first fruit listed because this is the core nature of God Himself. Therefore, our call to produce the fruit of love is to simply replicate God’s nature of love. Even the fruits of joy & peace are a part of the nature of God. Did you know He is called the “Happy God”? Yes, God rejoices and is the possessor of all joy. Not only that, but He is called the God of Peace, and He is the Prince of Peace! And the list goes on and on—God is also longsuffering, good, and kind. So, we saw how in First Corinthians 13:4 that love is kind. So, if God is love, then that Scripture is clearly revealing to us that God is kind. Therefore, as we saw earlier, God is not only longsuffering with us, but He is also kind in the midst of it! In other words, He will still pour out His kindness in our lives while He is waiting for us to repent of our mistakes. What an awesome God we serve! You see, even the “select elect” out there who actually believe God is patient and longsuffering have a hard time believing that God remains kind in the midst of our continual stumbling. They think that He is longsuffering, but He is tapping His foot in the midst of it. But no! God changes not! Therefore, He is still doing good and being kind even while He is waiting on us to live up to our potential. We looked at several other Scriptures that teach about how God is kind—not just to His children, but also to those who are unthankful & evil (See Luke 6:35-36). As we learned, it is going to take all of eternity to reveal to us all the riches of God’s kindness towards us (See Ephesians 2:7). This entails everything from our initial salvation to all the other ways that He has shown forth His kindness towards us in our walk with Him. Church, how many times in the Scriptures are we made aware of the “lovingkindness” of our God? LOVE DOES NOT ENVY Now the next thing that Paul includes in his description of love in First Corinthians 13:4 is that love does not envy. The word “envy” here comes from the Greek word zeloo and is simply defined as “to burn with zeal.” And the obvious way it is being used here is to be heated or to boil with envy, hatred, or anger. Therefore, it describes the warmth of feeling against someone. Now envy is very similar to jealousy, but they do have different characteristics. One difference is that while one might envy someone else’s spouse—desiring to have what they have—someone flirting with their own spouse might make them jealous. So, while jealousy can be involved with things that you already have, envy specifically desires to have something that someone else does. In fact, envy desires to have it even if that means depriving the other person of what they have. So the fact is, envy is completely motivated by selfishness—yearning to take something that someone else possesses for themselves or, at the least, ruining it for them. In fact, this is the word that was used to describe what motivated the chief priests to hand Jesus over to Pilate (See Matthew 27:18 & Mark 15:10)—for the root of their issue with Jesus was that they wanted the love, honor, and attention that He was receiving from the Jewish people. Therefore, they wanted Him crucified out of their envy. So if I were to have asked you—why did the religious leaders want Jesus crucified? Well, some of us might have said it was because they thought He was claiming to be one with God and was violating all of their religious rules, etc. but the fact is they wanted Him dead because of their “envy & jealousy.” This word “envy’ is also used to describe the envy that motivated Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery (Acts 7:9) and the jealousy that drove the Jews to gather a mob and attack a Christian’s home in Thessalonica (Acts 17:5). So while in both of these examples we might have just seen the sin of Joseph’s brothers harming & betraying him and the anger & hatred of the Jews gathering that mob to attack that believer’s home, the underlying issue was envy & jealousy. So my point is that sometimes we might see something that a person does, but totally miss the root cause of why they did it. Now envy is one of those vices that we see a lot about in the Bible, yet most Christians don’t see it as their problem. In other words, you will not find many believers who will say, “You know, I really struggle with envy & jealousy.” And I don’t think that’s necessarily because they are not owning up to it; I think it’s really just because most are blind to it in themselves. But here is the truth—if the Bible has so much to say about things like envy & jealousy, that’s because it is much more of a problem in the Body of Christ than we might think. For example, both envy & jealousy are listed in Paul’s “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19-21. God even saw fit to include this in His Ten Commandments when He commanded His people to not covet what was his neighbor’s. These are just a couple of examples, but my point is that it is threaded throughout the pages of our Bibles. For example, in both Psalms & Proverbs, notice how many times the Holy Spirit speaks about God’s people not envying the world:
That’s a lot of instruction devoted to a people who don’t struggle with envy, isn’t it? But no, it must be more of an issue than most people think it is for it to be repeated throughout the Scriptures. But here is the main problem with envy—it’s that it’s not what love does. Again, the apostle Paul said, “love does not envy.” That means to envy is not to love because if you are jealous of what is your neighbor’s, then how are you loving your neighbor as you do yourself? No, if you envy what they have, you are just loving yourself. Now regarding envying what is our neighbor’s, let me remind you that Paul taught us that the commandments are fulfilled in this one word—the royal law of loving our neighbor as we do ourselves (See Romans 13:8-10). So when we fulfill this command to love one another, we fulfill the law because we won’t murder our brother, we won’t steal from our brother, and we also won’t covet what our brother has. Therefore, love will not envy because why would love desire to have what was someone else’s. Again, that is selfish & self-centered. Love will desire to give to someone what we have, not take from them what they have. Church, true love—God’s love—rejoices when others are blessed. There is no room for envy. Love does not seek to benefit itself and it is content with what it has, because its focus is on meeting the needs of the ones it loves. But we also need to understand that envy does not just cause one to do evil & wicked things; it can also cause someone to do things that everyone would think were good & noble. For example, in James 3:13-18, we have an interesting section of verses that show that there were people in James’ church who seemed to be wise & have understanding. Heck, they were probably the supposed teachers and the leaders of this church! And Pastor James describes their underlying motivation in verse 14—it was “bitter envy” and “self-seeking” in their hearts. And it was that envy & selfishness that was creating all the confusion and the evil works that were going on there (See verse 16). In Philippians 1:15, the apostle Paul described how there was a faction of people who were actually “preaching Christ” from “envy and strife” and others who were preaching Him from “goodwill”—showing us again that even in one of the most noble things that a Christian can do – tell people about Jesus – it can be done from a bad motive. So we need to be aware that this little fox that likes to spoil our vines can produce in us both good & bad things. But the underlying motive is what is important. GOD DOES NOT ENVY BUT HE CAN BE JEALOUS But our point here today is that if love does not envy, then that means that God does not envy. Now this one might be a little easier for us to swallow because certainly God has no reason to be envious of anything we have, for all that we have was given to us by Him to begin with. But we need to consider another description of this word “envy.” It also describes a desire to deprive someone of something they have. In other words, envy not only wants to possess something someone else possesses; envy also wants to deprive the one they are taking from. But God is not like that, is He? No, He desires to add to us, not take away from us. Many like to quote verses like “He gives and He takes away” but that is not completely true. Although Job said that, when he said it, he did not have the understanding that Satan was the one who came to steal, kill, and destroy from him. Again, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy from our lives but love has come to add to our lives—and that more abundantly (see John 10:10)! So God’s nature, which is love, does the opposite of what envy does. While envy desires to take from others what they have, God desires to give to others and add to what they have. I’ll tell you—you’ll never find a bigger giver than God! I can give you Scripture after Scripture that talks about how His will is to bless you and I exceedingly, abundantly, above all we could ask or even think. Yes, pressed down, shaken together, and running over does He desire to add to us! One that proves this is found in Second Corinthians 9:7 where it describes how God loves a cheerful giver. Why do you suppose this is? It’s because the saint who is a cheerful giver is imitating Him! God is the cheerful giver! In fact, this is why there are so many Scriptures in the Bible that talk about us giving. It’s because God is wanting us to emulate Him by being givers the way that He has given to us! Amen! So God is certainly not in the business of envying because He does the exact opposite. He’s too preoccupied with giving to us! But just as God does not envy (in the bad sense), there are other verses that teach us how God does operate in the good kind of envy & jealousy. You might say, “I didn’t know there is a good kind of jealousy & envy.” Well, there actually is. Like I said earlier, the Greek word translated “envy” means “to burn with zeal.” And while this certainly describes the kind of burning with zeal for what others have (thus, envy), there is a good and even encouraged kind of burning zeal to possess good things that God said are for us. In other words, in the good sense, zeloo describes being zealous in the pursuit of good. So just as this word means to be zealous to obtain something another person has in a wrong way, it can also mean to be zealous for something good that God says we can have. We see it used this way in Galatians 4:17-18 when the apostle Paul said, “They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them. But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you.” The phrase “They zealously court” comes from this Greek word zeloo which, like I said, has both a positive and negative connotation. It is positive in the sense that it describes “earnestly desiring” the gifts of the Spirit (First Corinthians 12:31, 14:1 & 14:39). When Paul (back in Galatians 4) went on to say, “but for no good,” he was not insinuating that being “zealously courted” was wrong. Good godly leaders should show a love, desire, and affection towards the ones they are leading, just not for the wrong reasons. And Paul says here that the Judaizers were operating with “no good” motives. And as he goes on to say, it was so that they could “exclude” them—which means to shut or lock them out for themselves. And here was their motivation— “that you may be zealous for them.” Again, Paul uses this Greek word zeloo in the negative sense because he exposes these Judaizers motivation for zealously courting these Galatians. They did it all because they wanted themselves to be the object of the Galatians’ affections. Yes, they wanted the Galatian believers to look up to them and envy what they had and were not willing to share this with the apostle Paul. But as Paul goes on to say in the next verse— “But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always.” Again, Paul was not saying that being zealous was a bad thing. On the contrary, he says here being zealous is a good thing, as long it is being “fervent, passionate, on-fire, and dedicated” (synonyms for “zealous) about good things. In fact, he goes on to say that we ought to “always” be this way about the things of God (i.e., good). So here is the point I want to leave you with today— If it is always good to be “zealous” in a good thing, then how does God do this? Well, if your heart is open to see it, you can see how His heart burns with passion for us! Yes, like a person’s heart can burn with a desire to gain something that someone else has, God’s heart is to gain us! This is the love story of God’s kingdom! Like I said a moment ago, in First Corinthians 12:31, 14:1, and 14:39, we see this same word used to translate “envy” in a positive sense when Paul uses it to describe how we are to “earnestly desire” and “covet” spiritual gifts. Now it is obvious that this is not describing “envy” in a bad way. No, these spiritual gifts are not things that someone else possesses and are not for us. They are obviously things that the Lord has made available to any and all who are willing to go after them. Therefore, with that same burning heartfelt desire for something that is off-limits, we are actually encouraged to “covet” the best spiritual gifts! That means that we are to earnestly desire them at all costs and do whatever we have to in order to get them in our lives! I wonder if God has ever “earnestly desired” something like that? I believe He has—and that is YOU! In Second Corinthians 11:2, notice how Paul described that he was “jealous” for the Corinthian church with a “godly jealousy.” That means that while there is certainly an ungodly jealousy, there is also a godly jealously—meaning, it’s a jealousy that God possesses. Of course, we know that this isn’t a sinful type of jealousy—for God is incapable of sinning. So what this does teach us is that God is a jealous God when it comes to certain things. We see this in Exodus 20:4-5 when God, in giving the children of Israel the Ten Commandments, said, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …” Now it is important to realize what God was saying here: It was not that He is a glory-hog and can’t handle not being given all the attention, etc. No, it’s more like a marriage relationship: If a man and a woman are joined together, it is totally reasonable for either spouse to have zero tolerance for the other being unfaithful to them or even looking at another man or woman, right? This is more of what God was meaning when He described Himself as a “jealous God.” You see, we have a great example of this in the New Testament, where in James 4:5 we see it revealed that the Holy Spirit yearns for something like this: In this verse, the Word says, “Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, ‘The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously’?” This is preceded by verse 4 that calls us “Adulteresses” if we make ourselves friends with the world. That is because we are “married” to God and when we try and have a relationship with our ex-husband, the world, we are being unfaithful to our current mate. The Holy Spirit represents that current mate here and the Word says that He “yearns jealously”. A good paraphrase of this verse is “The Spirit that has come to settle down, make His home and permanently dwell in us, is bent with an all-consuming, ever-growing, excessive, passionate desire to possess us totally, and is envious and filled with jealousy toward anything or anyone who tries to take His place.” Ephesians 4:30 portrays this same picture. It says, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” The word “grieve” is the Greek word lupete. It is used to denote the emotions of a betrayed spouse, such as, being hurt, wounded, betrayed, misled, lied to, and abused. He is our spouse and partner, and He hurts when we are unfaithful. But again, this is not that unhealthy form of jealousy that is only thinking about itself. No, whatever this “yearning jealously” for us by God’s Spirit is, we know it has to be done in love, because the Holy Spirit is God and God is love. Therefore, it’s not our own perverted form of jealousy that’s ultimately just love for ourselves. No, this jealousy is a healthy kind that is motivated by love for the one that this jealousy is aimed towards. CONCLUSION Church, in this world we live in, people envy those who possess things like silver, gold, and precious stones. Yes, they covet these things that the world says are valuable. But the truth is—the only thing of great value on this earth is the souls of men. That’s what God so loved the world enough to send His only begotten Son to redeem. Yes, we are the pearls of great price! Yes, we are the treasure hidden in this field! And that’s what God is jealous for. That’s what He earnestly desires to possess! It’s you. It’s me. It’s every human being on this planet, fully & completely. So, what we must learn to do is to give Him everything. Yes, that means going into this lost and dying world and bringing people out of darkness and into the light. But it also means us giving our own selves completely over to Him—which is exactly what James was talking about in James 4:5. So, while love certainly does not envy, love possesses a healthy kind of jealousy towards the ones He created in His likeness & image. He desires to own us completely and is unwilling to share us with the enemy and this world. Hear the heart of the One that inspired the apostle Paul to utter these words today, the precious Holy Spirit, when he said in Second Corinthians 11:2 that he was “jealous for them with a godly jealousy.” This means that there is a jealousy that comes from God and that is the jealousy that a husband has for his wife to where he’s unwilling to share her with another man. That’s the way the Holy Spirit feels towards you today. He wants you as His own—because that’s what love does! Church, while God certainly does not envy, He is jealous—and that’s because He loves you so much, He doesn’t want to share you with anything or anyone else. Amen. REVIEW
In our series, “Imitators of Love”, we are looking at God’s true nature, but not in the traditional way. We are not looking at the verses that specifically teach us about His divine characteristics, but are looking at the ones that instruct us how to treat one another. In so doing, we are learning that if God tells us to love our brothers & sisters and even our enemies in a certain way, then that must be how Love Himself will love us. In other words, we are looking at the things He tells us to do and learning more about His loving nature because He wouldn’t instruct us to do something that He is not willing to do. Our keynote passage of Scripture that we are basing this teaching on is Ephesians 5:1-2 where the apostle Paul instructs us to imitate God as dear children. So, yes, being imitators of God would encompass everything else we could ever aspire to be in Him and for Him. So we spent several weeks looking at the verses that preceded Ephesians chapter 5 and learned how Paul got to this point of summarizing with this exhortation to imitate God—how God will not lie to us or steal from us, how He will speak to us in a certain way, and what His attitude is towards sin versus the sinner. Then last week, we started looking at another section of Scriptures that has been traditionally used to teach us how we are to love one another – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I made the point that unfortunately, most of us have mainly only heard these verses expounded on at marriage ceremonies. I for one love how these verses are used in weddings because, how many of you know, a newly married couple needs to know that these are the things that love does and they will have every opportunity to practice all of these various characteristics of love in their marriage? But the sad thing is that these descriptions & characteristics of love are not just for a married couple. No, they are applicable to every Christian for any & all relationships. But what we are doing is turning this around and teaching these verses from the same perspective that we have been—how because God is love, that these characteristics of love teach us the very characteristics of God Himself. So I encourage you that as we go through these verses, read them as so: “God suffers long and is kind, He does not envy, God does not parade Himself, He is not puffed up; God does not behave rudely, He does not seek His own, He is not provoked, He thinks no evil; God does not rejoice in iniquity, but He rejoices in the truth; God bears all things, He believes all things, He hopes all things, He endures all things; God never fails …” So, last week, we looked at Paul’s first description of love—that it “suffers long.” So, at the forefront of all of Love’s characteristics, we see that God is “longsuffering” (you might also say, “patient.”)—meaning that longsuffering with people is one of the most telling signs of where one’s love is. We learned that this phrase from First Corinthians 13:4 (“suffers long”) come from the Greek word makrothumia and comes from two words. The prefix is makros, which simply means “long”, and the other word is thumos, which describes “passionate anger or wrath.” So, when you combine these two words together, you see a person described that takes a “long” time to get “mad,” or you could say they are slow to anger. But again, we are not just looking at how we are to be longsuffering ourselves; we can read this verse as God suffers long with us because of His great love for us. So we looked at several verses that describe to us God’s divine longsuffering: We looked at the apostle Peter’s letters, understanding that Simon Peter was certainly a man who understood about the patience & longsuffering of God. In First Peter 3:20, we saw how Peter describes that it was “divine longsuffering” (i.e., God’s patience) that had Him wait in the days of Noah before bringing the flood on the earth—which we learned that sometimes we make the mistake of seeing God as quickly judging the world during the days of Noah, but while we might read about this event in one chapter of the Bible, the entire timetable that led up to this was much longer than it seems by just reading Moses’ account of it. And I can assure you that this was a several hundred years at the bare minimum from the time God pulled the trigger to flood the earth and the time it started to rain. And we also learned in Second Peter 3:9 that Peter talked about how this same longsuffering is on display even with us today: He said, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” The apostle Peter goes on, in this chapter, to describe this “longsuffering” of God as the grace & mercy He gives us until His Second Coming. So, like it was in the days of Noah, the human race is still here, and the Judgment has been staved off because our God suffers long! Isn’t the Lord described in the Scriptures as being “slow to anger”? In fact, I counted that, in the Old Testament alone, there are at least nine times that He is described this way. That’s a lot, church! And we learned that this is not our version of doing something slowly either. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, Jesus said, “Behold I am coming quickly!” right? Now He said that how long ago? Around 2,000 years, right? So, if 2,000-plus years is God doing something “quickly,” what is Him doing something “slowly”? Selah. Yes, God in His longsuffering has given each of us much more grace & mercy than we can comprehend. The fact is, if it were not for this “divine longsuffering,” many of us would not even still be here. The very fact that you and I are able to gather together today is proof of God’s patience. He has certainly suffered long with each and every one of us. Amen? He is incredibly slow to anger, and He is certainly longsuffering. LOVE IS KIND But looking back over at First Corinthians 13:4, I want you to notice that the apostle Paul does not just say that love suffers long; he says that love suffers long and is kind. How many of you know that it’s one thing to suffer long or be patient with others, but it’s a whole other ballgame to be kind while you’re doing it? In other words, someone might appear to be longsuffering on the outside, but on the inside, they have the wrong attitude while they are waiting. Let me give you an example of this— say someone is putting up with or tolerating another person’s tardiness. In other words, they are showing no signs that they are bothered by the person being late. However, they are fuming on the inside while they are waiting on them. Sound like anyone we know? Don’t look at your spouse😊 So, based on this, I see “kindness” as more of the attitude by which we do things for people. Sure, kindnesses are physical acts and things we do, but its more of an act of the heart that God is looking for. This is why as we saw in the first few verses of First Corinthians chapter 13, Paul was letting us know that even the most noble behaviors like prophesying into someone’s life, having faith that moves mountains, or even giving all of our goods to feed the poor mean nothing if they are not done motivated by love. Therefore, being patient with others has no real value if I don’t have a kind attitude while doing it. Amen? So let’s delve a little deeper into this virtue called “kindness.” In fact, it’s not just a virtue; like the fruit of longsuffering, the apostle Paul said this was one of the nine fruit of the Spirit. You see, in Galatians 5:22-23, we have two fruit of the Spirit “sandwiched” right in the middle that are generally not given as much attention to—these are the fruits of kindness & goodness. SISTER FRUITS What is the difference between these two fruit of the Spirit? I mean, they sound similar, don’t they? Well, they are strikingly similar, but there must be a difference if the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to mention them both as two distinct fruit of the Spirit, right? Like I said, I see “kindness” as more of the attitude by which we do things for people. “Goodness,” on the other hand, is what I believe to be the action accompanying the right attitude that we possess. But my point is that these two fruit of the Spirit work hand in hand. We might describe them as sister fruits, seeing how closely related they are. For example, some of you might describe the fruit of kindness in the exact opposite way—as the action itself and not the attitude—and the fruit of goodness as the inherent quality of a person. But here is what we must agree on: that both kindness and goodness are to be produced in our lives seeing as they are fruit of the Spirit. In other words, Paul is describing two virtues that we can see evidence of in one’s life and are not just what a person is versus what they do. No, every believer is called to both be kind and do kind things, to be good and do good things. And do you know why? It is because like it is with all nine of these fruit of the Spirit, these are not just virtues that God picked out as being good ideas for us to produce. No! They are fruit of the Spirit—meaning, they are fruit of who He is and what He Himself does! Amen! In other words, God has called His children to produce His very own fruit—that is, His will is for us to be just like Him! Sound familiar? Yes, love is the first fruit listed because this is the core nature of God Himself. Therefore, our call to produce the fruit of love is to simply replicate God’s nature of love. Even the fruits of joy & peace are a part of the nature of God. Did you know He is called the “Happy God”? Yes, God rejoices and is the possessor of all joy. Not only that, but He is called the God of Peace, the Prince of Peace is He! Next, we see the fruit of longsuffering—which we learned last week is a big part of His nature as well. Well, just as these first four fruit are fruits of God’s character, the next two are as well: God is absolute goodness, and He is total kindness! Let’s look a little at how “goodness” is a big part of who our God is: GOD IS GOOD AND DOES GOOD Now our Lord and Savior Jesus walked in the light and bore this fruit of goodness as well, did He not? We are told in Acts 10:38 that He went about “doing good” and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. Sure, Jesus performed miracles and healed thousands of people during His earthly ministry, but what people don’t talk about as much is all the good that He did aside from those spectacular things. Yes, Jesus bore an abundance of goodness in His life and ministry along with the healings and miracles He performed. You see, over and over, the Scriptures speak to us about the fact that God is good, and He does good (Psalm 119:68). And these verses not only tell us He’s good, but some of them show us how He is good. Let’s look at a couple of them in order to learn how we ourselves can walk in His goodness towards others: Psalm 34:8-10 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger; But those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.” When the Holy Spirit begins in verse 8 by inviting us to taste and see the Lord’s goodness, I can’t help but think of this fruit of the Spirit. And this fruit of His goodness can be both tasted and beheld. In verses 9-10, we see what His goodness produces— “no want, lack, or suffering hunger.” Let’s now look at the 84th Psalm: Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” You see, our good God is described here as a “sun,” and there are not many other physical things that we’ve been given that illustrate God’s goodness more than the sun. James 1:17 describes Him as the Father of lights that gives us every good and perfect gift. So, the sun itself is one of those good and perfect gifts. All we would need to become acutely aware of how good God has been to the human race is have that sun in the heavens burn out. Life would not be good, I can assure you. Not only is God our sun, but he is also our “shield.” That describes Him as our protector. Oh, how much each of us have been spared from!?! But notice what He is said to give—grace and glory. Church, in His goodness, He shares His glory with me. You could say, in His glory, He shares His goodness with me! That’s right! No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly! And what are these good things? Things that benefit and bless you and I. All of His grace and glory work on our behalf to meet our every need. Oh my glory! So, all of these Scriptures that illustrate to us God’s goodness teach us that the Lord is the giver of good things—and only things that benefit and never anything that steals, kills or destroys (John 10:10). No, God only gives “good” and perfect gifts, and He does not deviate from doing that very thing. Pastor James told us to not be deceived in this truth. (See James 1:16-17). May it be so with us, church, that as it is with the Lord, those around us will be able to both taste and see the fruit of goodness in our lives! Amen! THE RICHES OF HIS KINDNESS Now while we certainly see a lot about the goodness of God in the Bible, we don’t see a tremendous amount about God’s kindness. Or do we? Although we might be dealing with a matter of semantics when we attempt to differentiate between goodness & kindness, I think there is a lot more mentioned about God being kind in the Scriptures than we realize. For one, we saw how in First Corinthians 13:4 that love is kind. So if God is love, then that Scripture is clearly revealing to us that God is kind. Therefore, as we saw earlier, God is not only longsuffering with us, but He is also kind in the midst of it! In other words, He will still pour out His kindness in our lives while He is waiting for us to repent of our mistakes. What an awesome God we serve! You see, even the “select elect” out there who actually believe God is patient and longsuffering have a hard time believing that God remains kind in the midst of our continual stumbling. They think that He is longsuffering, but He is tapping His foot in the midst of it. But no! God changes not! Therefore, He is still doing good and being kind even while He is waiting on us to live up to our potential. Isn’t that amazing!?! In fact, the Lord Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that you are to “love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.” Why? “For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” (See Luke 6:35-36). Do you see how the idea of imitating of God is taught here by our Lord? And what is it that we are imitating? Yes, His mercy, but also His kindness. Amen! So let me ask you this—if God shows such great kindness to His enemies, to those are unthankful and not reciprocating in any way, to those who are evil even, then how much more will He be kind to His own children? Selah and selah! Church, the apostle Paul taught us that it is going to take all of eternity to reveal to us all the riches of God’s kindness towards us (See Ephesians 2:7). This entails everything from our initial salvation to all the other ways that He has shown forth His kindness towards us in our walk with Him. Regarding the kindness shown to us at salvation, Titus 3:4 says that it was the kindness of God our Savior that saved us. We also see in First Peter 2:3 where after the apostle Peter encouraged us as newborn babes to desire pure spiritual milk that we may grow up in our salvation, that he said, “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” The word “gracious” here is the same word as “kind” elsewhere. So the ‘kindness” of God is meant to be experienced all throughout our Christian lives! I mean, how many times in the Scriptures are we made aware of the “lovingkindness” of our God? Finally, look over at Romans 11:22 with me. In this verse, we see something very important about the kindness of God … In it, Paul said, “Considering both the kindness and the severity of God …” Church, I think most of us have only considered the severity side of God and not the kind side of God. In other words, far too many Christians have been trained to be hyper aware of God’s wrath, His anger towards sin, in an attempt to instill the fear of God in His people. And there is certainly a place for this, but what about the kindness side of God? Have we become as conscious of that as we are of His severe side? Sadly, most Christians have not. Church, we need to become more aware of this One of a KIND God. We need to consider that side of Him and let His goodness & kindness impact our hearts to the extent that it impacts our lives, and we start replicating His goodness & kindness. Yes, let’s begin to behold how good He is and how kind He is so that those fruits of the Spirit will start being produced in our lives. Amen? REVIEW
So recently, we have been on a series which I’ve entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are learning the true nature of Love Himself. In it, we are looking at the way God instructs us to treat one another being the way He treats each of us. Therefore, we can look at the things He tells us to do and learn more about His loving nature because He wouldn’t instruct us to do something that He is not willing to do. We are basing this teaching on Ephesians 5:1-2 where the bullseye of Christianity is us imitating God as His dear children. Yes, being imitators of God would encompass everything else we could ever aspire to be in Him and for Him. We learned that this word “imitators” describes someone who “mimics, copies, or follows after” someone else. We saw how in the original King James Version, this word is used seven times and is always translated as “follower(s).” So what we are doing is mimicking, copying, and following after God’s example when we love others, do good, show mercy, forgive, etc. We see how in verse 2, the apostle Paul used Jesus as the example of following after God—as He is the perfect example of God’s true nature. And we looked at how Jesus, the original “dear child” of God, was certainly all about His Father’s business in that He went about doing good and reflecting our Heavenly Father in both word & deed. In other words, as Jesus’ life reveals how God desires to do things, He is the best example we have for imitating God. So what we have been doing over the past few weeks is we’ve been looking back at the last several verses in Ephesians chapter 4 and saw how Paul got to this point of summarizing with this exhortation to imitate God.
LOVE IS THIS! Now this week, like we have been doing with these verses in Ephesians chapter 4, I would like us to begin looking at another section of Scriptures that has been traditionally used to teach us how we are to love one another – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. Let’s look at these verses … First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Unfortunately, most of us have mainly only heard these verses expounded on at marriage ceremonies. I for one love how these verses are used in weddings because, how many of you know, a newly married couple needs to know that these are the things that love does and they will have every opportunity to practice all of these various characteristics of love in their marriage? But the sad thing is that these descriptions & characteristics of love are not just for a married couple. No, they are applicable to every Christian for any & all relationships. But again, I want us to turn this around and teach these verses from the same perspective that we have been, in order to teach us the very characteristics of God Himself. Again, do the Scriptures not say that God is love (See First John 4:8)? This means that in all of these characteristics where we are told love is this and love is that, we could actually substitute God for the word love. So I encourage you that as we go through these verses, read them as so: “God suffers long and is kind, He does not envy, God does not parade Himself, He is not puffed up; God does not behave rudely, He does not seek His own, He is not provoked, He thinks no evil; God does not rejoice in iniquity, but He rejoices in the truth; God bears all things, He believes all things, He hopes all things, He endures all things; God never fails …” Yes, these verses give us a clear description of the Lord’s character and reveal to us who He truly is. So let’s go through these characteristics one by one and learn about the loving and caring nature of our heavenly Father and what it is that we are imitating … WHAT IS LONGSUFFERING? Now the very first thing that we see love Himself being described as is the One who “suffers long.” So, at the forefront of all of Love’s characteristics, we see that God is “longsuffering” (you might also say, “patient.”) Now I see “suffering long” with others as one of the most telling signs of where our love is. In other words, if we want to “take our temperature” to see what level of love we are at, then we need look no further than our patience and longsuffering with others. I understand that this might be hard to swallow because for so many of us, our fuse might be very short when it comes to dealing with people who test every ounce of our patience, but the fact is, “love suffers long.” Yes, love is patient and will continue to be patient with others. Now this certainly does not mean that if we are truly walking in love, we will have to endure any and every circumstance or people indefinitely. No, sometimes wisdom will dictate the time to remove ourselves from situations and to get out of certain relationships. So I say this to say, don’t think that you’re not walking in love because you do not continue to suffer through the situation & remove yourself from it. Sometimes that is necessary, and wisdom will show you when that time is. But what I would do is I’d suggest asking yourself in those times, am I looking to get out of this because I’m just tired of going through it or because the Lord is actually leading me to move on? Just objectively look for the love, and you won’t be led astray. But the fact is one of the major reasons that most people don’t “suffer long” with others is because they love themselves more than they love others. Therefore, we don’t allow ourselves to suffer very long because the “me” part of me doesn’t like suffering and certainly isn’t willing to suffer very long. Amen or Oh me? Now the phrase “suffers long” here in First Corinthians 13:4 comes from the same Greek word that is used for the fruit of the Spirit called “longsuffering.” You might be more familiar with some translations that use the word “patience” to describe this fruit, but I personally like “longsuffering” better and let me explain why … For one, the Greek word Paul used here in Galatians 5:22 (Greek makrothumia) is translated “longsuffering” many more times than it is patience. But the main reason I like the translation “longsuffering” better as it pertains to this fruit of the Spirit is because when you do a word study of “patience” and “longsuffering,” what you find is interesting … You see, most of the time that this word for “longsuffering” is used, it is used in connection with someone being patient with another person. However, with the word for “patience” (oftentimes the translation of the word hupomeno), it is often used in connection with being patient in circumstances. Therefore, I believe that the difference between these two Greek terms is that one (the one that is listed as a fruit of the Spirit, mind you) is patience in regard to people (i.e., makrothumia) and the other (i.e., hupomeno) is enduring circumstances. In other words, I think it is safe to assume that there is a patience that is used with people and that is called “longsuffering” and there is a patience that is used with circumstances and that is called “endurance.” However, while longsuffering is certainly similar in nature to patience, the primary difference between these two virtues is that longsuffering keeps one from anger, wrath, etc. and patience keeps one from moving when the pressure is put on (Greek hupomeno— “staying under power”). So, longsuffering is not moved by negative emotions while patience is not moved by negative circumstances. Now is it incorrect to say that we can be patient with people? Certainly not! But since there are different words that were used in those days to describe how one patiently endures both people and things, I believe it is important for us to have different terms in order to make a distinction. However, based on the verbiage we use in our culture today, a better translation might be “patience” because the term “longsuffering” is not a commonly used word today. But this is where it gets interesting: As I stated already, both the fruit of the Spirit which we call “longsuffering” and this phrase from First Corinthians 13:4 (“suffers long”) come from the Greek word makrothumia and comes from two words. The prefix is makros, which simply means “long”, and the other word is thumos, which describes “passionate anger or wrath.” So, when you combine these two words together, you see a person described that takes a “long” time to get “mad,” or you could say they are slow to anger. When it comes to makrothumia, I like to use the analogy of a stick of dynamite. But not just any ordinary stick of dynamite, but one that has a tremendously long fuse (i.e., that string that one lights on fire to ignite the dynamite). So, because its fuse is so long, you can “burn” it for a long time before it will ever “explode” on you. Therefore, the believer who is producing this virtue in his or her life is extremely “patient & forbearing” with others. We see this described in Ephesians 4:2 when Paul says, “with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” In other words, it is with longsuffering that we bear with one another in love. So, the fruit of longsuffering enables one to bear with others because of their love for them. You see, the lack of being able to “bear” it, is a lack of longsuffering. But again, it is not bearing with them with gritted teeth; it is bearing with them in love. CULTIVATING LONGSUFFERING Now as we look at longsuffering, it’s important that we realize that in our flesh, we are limited in how long our fuse will be. But since it is a fruit of love and of His Spirit, then that means that it comes from God and enables us to do what we never could have done on our own. No, it, like all of the fruit of the Spirit, comes from the fruit of a spiritually alive and Spirit-empowered life. While there are certainly some things that we can do to help us become more patient with others, such as a changed perspective and a renewed focus, the fact is that if we are going to produce the fruit of God’s longsuffering, we are going to need the Lord’s help to do it. In fact, in Colossians chapter one, Paul was praying for this church and said that he desired that they be “strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.” (Colossians 1:11). In other words, this prayer was for the supernatural strength and power of God to be poured into a believer’s life which would enable them “for all patience and longsuffering with joy.” So, if you and I are going to produce all of the patience (for every difficult circumstance) and all of the longsuffering (for every difficult person), then we are going to need God’s strength to do it—particularly, in order to be joyful while enduring. So, yes, it is going to take the Holy Spirit’s help in us producing this fruit to the degree that we ought. However, like I said, there is still a part we have to play in producing this fruit. Yes, in order to wear the fruit of longsuffering in my life, it is going to take a certain attitude and mentality. So, let me give you something that will help one to have the proper mindset to wearing this particular fruit: In Matthew chapter 18, we see in Jesus’ Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, how the servant goes from asking his master to be longsuffering with him to then hearing his brother pleading the same from him and showing no patience with him (See Matthew 18:26&29). What we can gather from this is that one of the reasons we don’t “suffer long” with others is because we are not being mindful to how “longsuffering” God has been with us. Therefore, it helps me to cultivate the ground of my heart for this fruit by consciously remembering how patient the Lord has been with me and the great debt He has dismissed in my own personal life. The apostle Paul understood this well: In First Timothy 1:16, he described his life & ministry as showing all of God’s longsuffering in order to teach all who would turn to Christ after him how longsuffering God will be with them. In other words, God’s own longsuffering in his life propelled Paul into a state of being longsuffering himself (Compare Second Timothy 3:10). So, both being the receiver of God’s patience and living in the awareness of how much He has suffered long with us is a key to cultivating the ground of our heart. Which leads me to the main point of what the Holy Spirit wants us to see today … DIVINE LONGSUFFERING So we are not just talking about how we to imitate God’s longsuffering ourselves, but how He Himself is the epitome of longsuffering … We see this mention of God’s longsuffering a lot in Peter’s letters. And why do you suppose that might be? I bet it was because Peter was a man who was in desperate need of this longsuffering nature of God, and he knew he had received a lot of God’s patience. Amen? How many other “Peters” do we have out there? In First Peter 3:20, he describes how it was “divine longsuffering” (i.e., God’s patience) that had Him wait in the days of Noah before bringing the flood on the earth. Now I think sometimes we make the mistake of seeing God as quickly judging the world during the days of Noah, but I want you to understand that while we might read about this event in one chapter of the Bible, the entire timetable that led up to this was much longer than it seems by just reading Moses’ account of it. You see, we do not know how long it had taken to get this bad on the earth before God even called Noah to build the ark. I’d assume it was hundreds of years of wickedness before the Lord made the final decision to flood the earth. Not only that, but the Lord even gave them an additional 120 years (the amount of time that most believe it took Noah to build the ark) before judging the world. In this “long” period of time, we are also told that Noah was preaching the truth. So, in the flood, where God judged the world for the wickedness in it, God certainly waited for hundreds of years, showing great longsuffering in doing what needed to be done. And in Second Peter 3:9, the apostle of hope talked about how this same longsuffering is on display with us today: He said, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” The apostle Peter goes on, in this chapter, to describe this “longsuffering” of God as the grace & mercy He gives us until His Second Coming. So, like it was in the days of Noah, the human race is still here, and the Judgment has been staved off because our God suffers long! We are familiar with a lot of this in our nation, aren’t we? It is clear that we are living in a world that is getting more perverse and twisted than we’ve seen it in our lifetime. And I’ve even heard many Christians question why this world continues to exist, and desire to leave this lost & perverse generation. But do you know things continue in this direction with God seemingly doing nothing to stop it? It’s because as Peter teaches us here, God is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. You see, those who are ready for the end to come are missing a very important point. And that is, that there are currently billions of lost people on this planet that Jesus came to die for. So, if Jesus were to return today, then all of those lost people will be condemned. Therefore, if we love people more than we hate the way the world is going, we too will pray for God’s longsuffering and patience on this world. Isn’t the Lord described in the Scriptures as being “slow to anger”? In fact, I counted that, in the Old Testament alone, there are at least nine times that He is described this way. That’s a lot, church! And this is not our version of doing something slowly either. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, Jesus said, “Behold I am coming quickly!” right? Now He said that how long ago? Around 2,000 years, right? So, if 2,000-plus years is God doing something “quickly,” what is Him doing something “slowly”? Selah. Yes, God in His longsuffering has given each of us much more grace & mercy than we can comprehend. The fact is, if it were not for this “divine longsuffering,” many of us would not even still be here. The very fact that you and I are able to gather together today is proof of God’s patience. He has certainly suffered long with each and every one of us. Amen? He is incredibly slow to anger! Finally, Romans 2:4 also describes this “divine longsuffering” when Paul said, “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” We see in this verse that things like God’s kindness, forbearance & longsuffering are the fruit of His goodness. And the point Paul was making right here was that when we bear this fruit, it leads others to change. Thus, the importance of bearing the fruit of longsuffering: it helps others change. For example, Peter talked about how this is one of the ways a wife can win her husband to the Lord (see First Peter 3:1-2)—by the fruit she’s producing in her life. So, do you suppose if I bear the fruit of longsuffering in my life, it might help convert someone? I guarantee you it can—for it’s the manifestation of God’s goodness (in us and through us) that leads man to repentance. But what about God’s longsuffering with us? What do you think happens if we behold it? I guarantee you that it too will change us—and to a much greater degree. This is why I believe Paul was encouraging us not to “despise” the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering. It’s because if we don’t value things like God’s longsuffering, it won’t change us. Let’s let His longsuffering change us, church! Let’s behold the beauty of His patience with us and learn to “suffer long” with others ourselves! |
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